Most women experience this time in their lives when pursuing a career, building a relationship, and deciding on children can all seem like a competition at the same time. At some point, around the late 20’s or early 30’s, the discussion becomes more serious, either because of the announcement of a friend’s pregnancy or a casual comment from a family member. Egg freezing falls somewhere in that middle ground, and many women remain uncertain about whether or not it can apply to them, or if it’s simply for those with a medical diagnosis.
Well, the simple answer is it’s more applicable to a larger audience than most people realize. Egg freezing involves the retrieval of a woman’s eggs, their freezing (through a process called ‘vitrification’), and subsequent storage for future use, if the moment comes when she’s ready to conceive. It doesn’t ensure a baby in the future, and no clinic with integrity will give women that assurance, but it does provide a woman with more options to make her own decisions, at her own pace, and not solely based on biology.
The Groups Who Usually Benefit Most
Although the emotional motivation for freezing eggs is vastly different, from a clinical perspective, it is treated almost as if it’s because of medical needs. Egg freezing may be done before chemotherapy or radiation therapy, when ovarian reserve is likely to be negatively impacted, as the procedure is for a cancer diagnosis. Women who have a disease such as endometriosis, or who have surgery in proximity to their fallopian tubes or their ovaries, fall into the same category and could find that they may lose the chance.
There are also the many more women who opt to freeze their eggs because their life plans and their biology don’t seem to be making the same sweet, sweet music. Perhaps it’s a career that’s at a challenging point, perhaps it’s the right dating partner that hasn’t arrived yet, perhaps it’s simply that there’s no urgency at 28 that suddenly steps up to 35. It reveals not indecision, but rather a shift of power from men to women in making their own reproductive decisions.
I think that the age factor is indeed real and can’t be ignored by any clinic. Egg quality decreases over time in the thirties and even more significantly after the forties, so it is important for a woman to seriously consider egg freezing sooner, rather than later. Doctors are more inclined to raise the subject early because patients tend to have fewer usable eggs when they wait until the last minute.
Before anything else, the first step a woman takes regarding fertility preservation is a consultation, a few blood tests to determine hormone levels, and an ultrasound to give the patient an idea of their ovarian reserve. From there, stimulation medications are administered to stimulate the ovaries, and then retrieval, which is a process that takes a few weeks to complete, in most instances.
Where Location and Regulation Start to Matter
It is not a trivial decision to make when it comes to where you go through this process, and it is important to invest some time in making the decision. A fertility clinic in Abu Dhabi, for example, operates under regulations in the UAE that have undergone significant changes since 2021, when the rules were relaxed to permit freezing eggs by single women (previously they were not allowed to be frozen. The change in the law alone made the prospect of egg freezing available to many more women nationwide who had never been able to consider it before.
It’s also about cost, and that’s dependent on the number of cycles you need, how many medications you need, and any storage fees, so it helps to get a good breakdown of the cost early on to save a lot of confusion later.
None of this should be made in a hurry or with pressure. It’s easier to plan around all these points early, before the deadline looms, than to try and do them at the last minute.
How the Process Comes Together in Practice at Art Fertility Clinic
The process of egg freezing from consultation to retrieval and storage is best when performed in stages and monitored throughout, rather than following a rushed schedule, with hormone testing, stimulation, and vitrification performed at each stage. Offered at ART Fertility Clinics, which has locations throughout Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Al Ain, it is provided via tailored procedures and skilled embryology teams that handle each step of preservation.
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