Freezing Your Eggs: Why it might be the right choice — and why it might not
Egg freezing is often presented as a clear-cut decision: do it early, do it now, don’t miss your chance. The messaging can feel urgent, almost binary. Freeze your eggs or risk regret.
But in reality, the decision is far more nuanced.
For some women, egg freezing is genuinely empowering. For others, it’s expensive, emotionally demanding, and not the right fit — at least not right now. So if you’re asking yourself “Should I freeze my eggs?”, the most helpful place to start isn’t with timelines or success graphs. It’s with context.
What Egg Freezing Can Offer
At it’s simplest, the idea of egg freezing (oocyte cryopreservation) is that eggs are collected at your current age and stored them for potential future use. If those eggs are later thawed, fertilised and transferred, they may offer a higher chance of pregnancy than eggs produced at an older age.
For many women, that possibility alone brings a sense of breathing room — not because time has stopped, but because options have expanded.
Egg freezing can work on a number of levels. It can offer some absolute mental & psychological relief and a sense of time. It therefore offers more reproductive options later in life, and acts as a way to preserve fertility while circumstances aren’t aligned (relationships, health, work, finances) (when I was single and in my early 30s, this idea was very appealing).
It can be particularly relevant for women facing medical treatments that may affect fertility, or those who want children but not in their current life context. In these situations, egg freezing can feel like a supportive bridge — not a promise, but an option.
What Egg Freezing Does Not Do
This is where the conversation often becomes overly simplistic — and where realistic expectations matter most.
It’s vital to understand that egg freezing does not guarantee a future pregnancy, and neither does it remove age-related fertility decline entirely. It doesn’t mean you can delay starting a family indefinitely, and it doesn’t work equally well for everyone.
From a clinical perspective, outcomes depend on multiple variables, including age at freezing, the number of eggs retrieved and stored, egg quality, future sperm quality, and uterine and overall health at the time the eggs are used.
It’s also important to understand that freezing eggs and freezing embryos are not the same in terms of success rates. This is an important on.
Eggs vs Embryos: A Quiet but Important Difference
When eggs are frozen, several unknowns remain. The egg must survive thawing, fertilise successfully, and develop into a viable embryo. Embryos, by contrast, have already passed some of those steps.
Large registry datasets consistently show that:
Frozen embryos have higher survival rates after thawing than frozen eggs (source)
Pregnancy and live birth rates per transfer are higher with frozen embryos than with eggs frozen at the same age
Broadly speaking:
Around 80–90% of frozen embryos survive thawing
Around 70–80% of frozen eggs survive thawing (source)
Not all thawed eggs fertilise successfully
Not all fertilised eggs develop into transferable embryos
What this means for you: Because of this natural attrition, women generally need a higher number of frozen eggs to achieve a similar chance of a live birth compared with frozen embryos. Depending on age at freezing, clinical estimates often suggest that 10–20 frozen eggs may be required for one live birth, on average (source). These figures are population-based estimates, not predictions for any individual (source) (source).
Why Many Women Still Choose Egg Freezing
If embryo freezing tends to offer higher success rates, it’s reasonable to ask why egg freezing is so commonly chosen. Many times, it can be quite obvious - embryo freezing requires a current partner, or the use of donor sperm.
For many women, that introduces a whole other world of emotional, ethical and legal complexities — particularly when relationships, wishes and life circumstances may so often change.
Egg freezing can offer greater reproductive autonomy. It allows women to preserve fertility potential without involving another person in that decision. For many, that flexibility outweighs the lower predictability.
Reasons You Might Choose to Freeze Your Eggs
You might reasonably decide to proceed if:
You want children, but timing genuinely isn’t right
Preserving the option would reduce your anxiety
You have the emotional and financial capacity for the process
You understand this as risk reduction, not insurance
In clinic, women who tend to feel most settled with their decision are those who enter the process with realistic expectations rather than pressure or urgency.
Reasons You Might Decide Not To (Or Not Yet)
Choosing not to freeze your eggs can be just as thoughtful and valid.
You might decide not to (or not now) if:
The financial cost would create ongoing stress
The physical or emotional load feels too heavy
You’re comfortable living with uncertainty
You’re open to alternative future paths to parenthood
You’re still unsure whether you want children at all
Egg freezing is optional. Declining it is not a failure, a lack of foresight, or a poor choice on anyone’s part.
The Emotional Layer We Don’t Talk About Enough
Egg freezing is often framed as practical and empowering — and it can be. But it can also stir up grief, comparison, fear and pressure, sometimes all at once. Many women find themselves quietly mourning how they imagined their life might unfold, while simultaneously feeling anxious about making the “right” decision. Stims (hormonal stimulation cycles for egg growth and retrieval) can also amplify emotional swings, but even without that biological layer, the process itself carries emotional weight. Relief often sits alongside a subtle sadness, rather than replacing it.
None of these feelings mean you’ve made the wrong decision. They reflect the reality of navigating a deeply personal choice in the presence of uncertainty.
A More Helpful Question Than “Should I?”
Rather than asking “Should I freeze my eggs?”, a more grounded question is: “Would freezing my eggs reduce or increase my stress, given my current life?”
That answer matters. A lot.
What This Often Sounds Like in Clinic
In a good fertility consultation, the conversation is rarely directive. It usually sounds more like: “Egg freezing may preserve some fertility potential at your current age, but it doesn’t guarantee a baby.” “Embryos tend to offer higher success rates, but they come with different emotional and practical considerations.” And “The question isn’t whether this is the ‘right’ choice — it’s whether it’s right for you, right now.”
A Grounded Perspective
Egg freezing is not a moral obligation, a feminist duty, or a strategy to avoid future regret. It can be useful if you’re sitting on the fence, to view it simply as a valid medical option — one that can be supportive for some women at certain points in their lives, and unnecessary or misaligned for others.
The right decision isn’t found in stats alone or in what anyone else is doing. It’s the one that sits comfortably with your values, your health, your current capacity, and your tolerance for uncertainty. Those factors matter far more than age cut-offs or external pressure.
There is no single correct timeline, and no universally “right” answer. Some women will decide to proceed and feel relief. Others will decide not to, or not yet, and feel equally settled. Both choices can be thoughtful, informed, and valid.
You’re allowed to decide yes. You’re allowed to decide no. And you’re allowed to decide later.
Need an ear to talk to? X
PS Stay tuned for further articles in this series - how to prep, what egg freezing cycles look like, and recovery… coming soon x