Egg freezing

Egg freezing is one way of preserving your fertility so you can use them later on for more fertility treatment. You might want to consider freezing your eggs if:

• You have a medical condition or need treatment for a medical condition that will affect your fertility, such as cancer (in this case NHS funding may be available depending on where you live).
• You’re at risk of injury or death (for example, you’re a member of the Armed Forces who is being deployed to a war zone).
• If you’re a female transitioning to a male, you may want to preserve your fertility before you start hormone therapy or have reconstructive surgery. Both treatments can lead to the partial or total loss of your fertility.
• You don’t want to have leftover embryos after IVF treatment for ethical reasons.

For information on freezing and female same-sex treatment costs, please see our full fee schedule on our fees and funding page. You can also use our fee calculator to get a more accurate estimate of your treatment costs.

Any eggs collected from you at our clinics in Cambridge, Norwich or Wickford, that are suitable for freezing, will be stored at your chosen clinic. The standard storage period allowed by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is a maximum of 10 years, although women in certain circumstances may be able to store their eggs for up to 55 years. For example, when the woman is at risk of becoming prematurely infertile through medical treatments such as chemotherapy.

If your eggs are frozen and stored at the clinic, we’ll contact you every year and ask you to confirm your wishes for the next 12 months. If you wish to continue storage with us, there is an annual storage fee to pay.

When the time comes for you to use your stored eggs, they will be thawed and inseminated with sperm. We’ll then transfer the resulting embryos to you, using the same procedure as in a conventional IVF embryo transfer.

Find out more about egg freezing.

At our East of England clinics including Cambridge, Colchester, Norwich and Wickford, ovarian function and reserve tests, sometimes known as an ‘egg count’, involving blood tests and ultrasound imaging of your ovaries, tells us a lot about your fertility.

Women are born with a finite number of eggs that are stored in the ovaries. Over time, these are released until the stock runs out (the menopause). The quality of the egg also diminishes as stock levels decline.

In order to gain an accurate picture of your stock of eggs, we perform a number of blood tests and an ultrasound assessment of your ovaries.

The blood tests measure Anti-Müllerian Hormone (AMH) – to provide guidance on natural conception, your potential egg count from fertility treatments, and how well your ovaries are likely to respond to different medication regimes – Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH), Luteinising Hormone (LH), and Estradiol. Progesterone (P4) is also measured to assess whether the eggs are being released at the right time.

The ultrasound assessment tells you how many immature follicles – structures containing potential eggs – are visible in the ovary, giving an estimation of stock levels. While we are performing this test, we will also evaluate any problems or abnormalities in your uterus and its lining, as well as around your reproductive organs.

For more information about our female fertility tests, please contact our one of our East of England clinics, including those at Cambridge, Colchester, Norwich, and Wickford.