Tag: egg count

Thinking about egg freezing? Learn how it works, success rates, costs, and when to start preserving your fertility. Thinking about freezing your eggs? Whether you’re planning for the future or not ready to start a family just yet, egg freezing  is a powerful fertility preservation option. In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about how to freeze your eggs, how to freeze your eggs, and what factors to consider, including age, success rates, and costs. What Is Egg Freezing and Why Do People Do It? Egg freezing, also known as oocyte cryopreservation, is a fertility preservation technique that allows you to save your eggs for future use. It’s becoming an increasingly popular option for those who want to keep their options open when it comes to having children later in life – but does it guarantee you’ll have a baby? Let’s explore the facts. People choose egg freezing for a variety of reasons, including: Planning to have children later in life Undergoing medical treatment that could affect fertility (e.g. chemotherapy) Personal or career goals Not having found the right partner yet We explore this further in Who should consider fertility preservation?  How Does Egg Freezing Work? Step 1: Hormone Stimulation You’ll take fertility medications to stimulate your ovaries to produce multiple mature eggs in one cycle. During this time, you’ll attend regular scans and blood tests to monitor your response. Step 2: Egg Collection (Egg Retrieval) After ~10-14 days of stimulation, your eggs are collected in a short medical procedure under sedation. Once your eggs are ready, they’ll be collected via a minor surgical procedure under sedation. Most people recover within a day or two. Step 3: Freezing and Storage (Cryopreservation) Your eggs are frozen using a fast-freezing technique called vitrification, then stored safely in liquid nitrogen for potential use in the future. Can Freezing Your Eggs Guarantee a Baby? The short answer is no – freezing your eggs does not guarantee you’ll have a baby. It can increase your chances, especially if you freeze your eggs at a younger age, but several factors affect whether you’ll conceive and carry a baby successfully later in life. One major factor is your age at the time of freezing. Younger eggs tend to be healthier and more likely to result in a successful pregnancy. Freezing eggs in your twenties or early thirties typically leads to better outcomes than doing so in your late thirties or forties. Another key factor is the number of eggs you freeze. Not all eggs will survive the freezing and thawing process. Even if they do, not every egg will fertilise or become a healthy embryo. Your overall reproductive health at the time you want to use the eggs also matters. This includes the health of your uterus, your hormone levels, and any underlying fertility issues that may have developed over time. Success also depends on the quality of sperm used and the effectiveness of IVF when you’re ready to conceive. A partner’s or donor’s sperm must be healthy enough to fertilise the eggs, and the embryo must implant successfully in the uterus. When Is the Best Age to Freeze Eggs? If you’re asking, “When should I freeze my eggs?” the general recommendation from fertility experts is between you late 20s to mid 30s. During this window, egg quality and ovarian reserve are still relatively high, giving you the best chance of success later. But this isn’t a one-size-fits-all decision. Everyone’s fertility journey is different. Some people may choose to free their eggs earlier or later depending on their health, family history, a medical condition that could affect fertility, or plans to undergo treatments like chemotherapy. Others may freeze their eggs later due to career, relationship, or financial considerations.. While it’s still possible to freeze your eggs after 35, it’s important to know that success rates may decline as egg quality and reserve begin to drop with age. If you’re wondering when to start the process, the best first step is to book a fertility assessment. This typically includes hormone testing and an ultrasound to check your ovarian reserve. With this information, you can get a clearer picture of your fertility status and make an empowered decision about whether and when to freeze your eggs. You may also want to understand how ageing can affect fertility rates in women. How Many Eggs Do I Need To Freeze to Have a Baby? There’s no magic number, but we can estimate based on age and clinical data. Based on research from studies like Goldman et al. (2017) and Doyle et al. (2016), we can estimate the number of mature eggs typically needed to have about a 70% chance of achieving one full-term pregnancy. These numbers are estimates based on aiming for one baby, so if you’re hoping to grow a bigger family, freezing more eggs may be necessary to maximise your chances.   Note: These numbers aim for one full-term pregnancy. This estimation may vary depending on other factors. If the goal is more than one child, more eggs should be frozen. What Are the Egg Freezing Success Rates? If you’re thinking about freezing your eggs, one of the most important things to understand is your chance of having a baby later on. While there’s no guaranteed number of eggs that will result in a full-term pregnancy, we can give a reliable estimate based on several factors especially your age at the time of freezing. Success with frozen eggs depends on four key steps: egg survival after thawing, fertilisation, embryo development, and successful implantation. Let’s break it down. Age at the Time of Freezing Matters Most Age is the single biggest factor influencing the quality and quantity of eggs. Younger eggs tend to be healthier and have a much higher chance of leading to a successful pregnancy. How Well Do Eggs Survive Freezing and Thawing? Thanks to modern vitrification techniques, between 90–95% of mature eggs survive the thawing process. That’s a big leap from […]

AMH (anti-Müllerian hormone) is a hormone made by the small, developing follicles in your ovaries. Measured with a simple blood test, and is a marker of your ovarian reserve or broadly, how many eggs you have left. It reflects egg quantity, not quality, and it’s one important piece of your wider fertility picture, not the whole story. If you’ve come across it while looking into your fertility, egg freezing, or “checking your egg count,” you’re in the right place. Here’s what AMH actually is, what your result can and can’t tell you. Quick facts: What is AMH? Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) is made by cells surrounding the small, developing follicles in your ovaries. Each of these follicles contains an immature egg. Because the number of these follicles is related to the size of your remaining egg pool, the amount of AMH in your blood can provide an indication of your ovarian reserve. Think of AMH as an indirect marker rather than an egg counter. It cannot tell you exactly how many eggs are left in your ovaries, but it can help show whether your ovarian reserve appears higher, lower or around what would be expected for your age. You’re born with all the eggs you’ll ever have, as we age, both our egg quality and quantity declines. As the pool shrinks, so does your AMH, which is what makes it such a useful window into where your reserve sits for your age. What is a normal AMH level for my age? There is no single normal AMH level that applies at every age. AMH naturally declines as you get older. A level that might be considered relatively low for someone in their 20s could be entirely expected for someone in their early 40s. That means the most useful question is not if you levels are good or bad, but more about how your levels compare with what is expected for someone your age? Broadly, AMH is higher in your twenties and declines through your thirties, with a steeper drop from the mid-thirties onwards, though there’s wide natural variation, and some people have a lower reserve earlier than expected. AMH results are also assay-specific. Different labs use different testing platforms, and because there’s no single international standard for calibrating AMH, a number from one lab can’t be directly compared to a number from another. This is why a result is only meaningful when it’s read against the reference range of the exact lab that ran it. At Hertility, AMH is interpreted using age-stratified reference ranges, so your result is compared with the expected range for people of a similar age rather than against one universal cut-off. Your result should also be interpreted alongside factors such as your cycle history, symptoms, hormonal contraception, medical history and fertility goals. How does AMH change with age? AMH is generally highest earlier in reproductive life and decreases as the ovarian follicle pool declines with age. There is, however, a lot of variation between individuals. Two people of exactly the same age can have quite different AMH levels without either necessarily having a reproductive health problem. This is why age matters so much when interpreting AMH. AMH also shouldn’t be confused with egg quality. Although both egg number and egg quality decline with age AMH measures the follicle pool. It does not tell us whether the eggs within that pool are chromosomally healthy. What does a low AMH level mean? A low AMH result means your ovarian reserve appears lower than expected for your age. It does not mean that you cannot get pregnant. This distinction is really important. AMH is much better at predicting how your ovaries may respond to fertility medication than it is at predicting whether you will conceive naturally. Current NICE guidance specifically says AMH should not be used to predict the chance of pregnancy through spontaneous conception. Instead, AMH or an antral follicle count (AFC) can be used to predict ovarian response when planning assisted conception. So if your AMH is low, it may mean that fewer eggs would be expected to develop during an IVF or egg-freezing stimulation cycle. Depending on your age and plans for pregnancy, it may also be useful information when thinking about fertility timelines. But it does not tell us whether the eggs you have are healthy, whether you are ovulating, whether your fallopian tubes are open, whether there are any issues affecting your uterus or, where relevant, whether sperm factors could affect conception. Does low AMH mean I can’t get pregnant? Many people with low AMH conceive naturally and without difficulty, particularly when they are younger and their egg quality is high. What low AMH does mean is: It tells you that your egg quantity is lower than average for your age. If your AMH is very low, particularly if you are under 40 and also have irregular or absent periods or symptoms associated with early menopause, your doctor may want to investigate further for conditions such as premature or primary ovarian insufficiency (POI). AMH alone, however, does not diagnose POI. Does high AMH mean I am fertile and won’t have problems conceiving? A high AMH level usually means there are more small follicles in the ovaries than expected for your age. It does not automatically mean you are more fertile. This is another common misconception about AMH. More follicles may mean a larger ovarian reserve, but natural fertility depends on much more than egg quantity. AMH cannot tell you about egg quality, whether you ovulate regularly, the health of your fallopian tubes or uterus, or sperm quality. Higher AMH is also commonly seen in people with PMOS, formerly known as PCOS, because the ovaries often contain a greater number of small follicles. A high AMH result therefore needs context rather than being interpreted as simply “good”. Can AMH diagnose PMOS or PCOS? AMH can contribute to a PMOS/PCOS assessment in adults, but it cannot diagnose PMOS on its own. Under current international guidance, AMH […]