What Is the Best Age to Freeze Your Eggs?

Thanks to evolving technology, that biological clock most women are warned to fear is ticking less loudly these days. If you’d like to stop that dreaded tick-tock, you can freeze your healthy eggs until you’re ready for parenthood.

Deborah Smith, MD is a Reproductive Endocrinology and fertility specialist, with offices in two convenient locations in Englewood, CO and Rapid City, SD. Dr. Smith encourages women who are putting off pregnancy to consider egg freezing. However, when it comes to understanding what time is the right time to freeze your eggs, age is only one factor to consider.

Understanding egg production

As a woman, you’re born with a finite number of eggs, about 1 million. By puberty, however, this number drops to around 300,000. That sounds like a lot, but only 300-400 of those eggs will ovulate during your reproductive years.

And because it takes the average woman six months to a year to conceive, you can assume that many of these ovulated eggs don’t lead to a viable pregnancy. Typically, the more eggs remaining in your ovaries, the better your odds of becoming pregnant.

Age does matter with fertility

It’s true that your fertility declines as you age. That’s directly related to the number of eggs remaining in your ovaries as well as the quality of those eggs. Not every egg can partner with sperm to produce a baby.

Generally, fertility begins to drop as early as your late 20s or early 30s. It tends to fall more rapidly after age 35 as your egg reserves become even more depleted. Thus, the best age for freezing your eggs likely falls somewhere between 27 and 34.

It’s important to note, however, that if you’ve already passed the ideal age range, you likely still have time to undergo egg freezing. Your specialist at Rocky Mountain Fertility Center can discuss your options in detail at the time of your evaluation.   

Factors that may affect the timing of egg freezing

Certain medical conditions and circumstances can alter your ability to produce viable eggs in the future, including:

• Sickle cell anemia
• An autoimmune disease such as lupus
• Gender diversity, such as being transgender
• Upcoming medical treatments such as radiation therapy or chemotherapy for cancer 

Many women also choose to undergo egg freezing because their careers are just beginning or are demanding enough to preclude having children for a few years. Other women prefer to freeze eggs rather than embryos for fertility procedures such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

Regardless of your reason, harvesting eggs for freezing can be a highly effective way to control the timing of a pregnancy. Your specialist can freeze eggs up to 10 years or longer.

For more information about egg freezing or other fertility concerns, schedule an appointment at Rocky Mountain Fertility Center today by calling or using our convenient online booking tool.