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Egg freezing offers women more time to have children, but experts warn it does not guarantee pregnancy. Jennifer Lynn Salcedo shares her experience with the treatment.
Jennifer Lynn Salcedo announced at her 36th birthday party that she would freeze her eggs, describing the decision as empowering but the treatment as physically and emotionally gruelling. Egg freezing, or oocyte cryopreservation, is a form of assisted reproductive technology (ART) that involves retrieving and freezing mature, unfertilised eggs for potential future use. Salcedo had considered the procedure for about six years before starting it.
What Is Egg Freezing and How It Works
Egg freezing, also known as mature oocyte cryopreservation, is a medical procedure that retrieves and freezes a woman's eggs for later use. The treatment aims to preserve younger eggs for potential future pregnancy. However, experts note that it does not guarantee a future pregnancy or birth. Success depends on factors including the woman's age when the eggs are frozen and the number of eggs stored.
Australia's first baby conceived through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) was born in 1980. Today, ART is an established part of fertility care in Australia, with about one in 16 babies born as a result of these treatments. The 2024 Australian and New Zealand Assisted Reproduction Database report recorded more than 113,000 IVF treatment cycles in 2024, resulting in more than 20,900 babies. It also found that three in four IVF babies were born using frozen embryos, reflecting a shift towards frozen embryo transfers.
Rising Demand for Elective Egg Freezing
Salcedo, who has focused on her career and is currently single, said egg freezing provided an insurance policy. She noted that many friends are having children and getting married, and while she has always wanted to be a mother, her life path has not yet led there. Her experience reflects a growing trend among women who choose to freeze their eggs electively.
A study led by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, published last year, analysed elective egg-freezing rates in the United States between 2014 and 2021. It found that the number of planned elective egg-freezing cycles increased from 4,153 in 2014 to 16,436 in 2021. Among women who froze their eggs between 2014 and 2016, 5.7 per cent returned to use them within the study's five-to-seven-year follow-up period.
Dr Tamara Hunter, a fertility specialist, said she sees women like Salcedo daily but also turns away some young women. She explained that some women ask their GP to test their ovarian reserve and then request egg freezing based on the results. For some, she advises waiting. For example, she might tell a 25-year-old with a normal egg count that there is no hurry and suggest they return at age 30.
Success Rates and Medical Considerations
Ovarian reserve tests can indicate the number of eggs remaining but cannot measure egg quality or reliably predict a woman's chances of conceiving naturally. Hunter said it is unclear whether the length of time an egg is frozen affects its fertility. She noted that large studies are lacking to show whether leaving an egg frozen for more than five years significantly degrades it. This uncertainty partly stems from historical data drawing on women who freeze eggs for medical reasons, such as before chemotherapy, making it difficult to apply those findings directly to elective egg freezing.
Professor Georgina Chambers, director of the National Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistics Unit at the University of New South Wales, said modern freezing techniques have produced strong results for embryos. She explained that with vitrification, a modern freezing technique, the quality of frozen embryos remains extremely high. She added that freezing embryos can allow a woman's body to return to a natural cycle before transfer, which can improve treatment outcomes. By allowing the endometrium to be ready to receive the embryo, higher success rates are achieved.
For women considering egg freezing, the decision involves balancing age-related fertility decline with the treatment's cost, physical demands and uncertain chances of ultimately using the frozen eggs. The technology offers the potential to use younger eggs later, but it raises questions about how much reassurance it can realistically provide.
Egg Freezing Jennifer Lynn Salcedo Assisted Reproductive Technology IVF Australia University Of California Los Angeles University Of New South Wales
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