Skip to content
Close
SEARCH
Contact Us
Contact Us

EMBRYO FREEZING

Care Fertility offers embryo freezing and storage in case you need another round of treatment, or if you’d like to grow your family in the future. 

Could freezing my embryos be right for me?

Embryo freezing and embryo storing is routine at Care Fertility, and with the vitrification technique frozen embryos can get great results. You won’t know whether you have embryos available for freezing until you’re well into your treatment cycle, but we’ll discuss the possibility with you before you start treatment. 

Why you should freeze and store your embryos

 You might freeze and store your embryos because: 

  • You’re having IVF treatment and still have some viable embryos left after transfer.
  • You’re having IVF treatment, but we’ve advised against a fresh transfer at that time.
  • You’re not ready to have a baby just yet but want to preserve your fertility. 

Everyone’s different, and we’ll go through all aspects of your treatment to help you decide exactly what’s right for you. 

What does embryo freezing involve?

When you’re going through IVF treatment, once we’ve fertilised your eggs we’ll talk to you regularly about how your embryos are developing, and we’ll let you know whether there will be any of the right quality left for freezing. If there are, and you’d like us to store them for you they are frozen in the following steps: 

  • Special vitrification solutions are used to protect them in storage 
  • Your embryos are placed in straws individually so that we can trace each one 
  • The straws are frozen in liquid nitrogen at -196C. All storage vessels have temperature alarms which are monitored 24/7 

When you’re ready to use your embryos, we’ll remove an embryo from storage and carefully warm it. Then, if it’s good enough quality, we’ll prepare it for transfer. We’ll aim to place the embryo into the womb of you or your partner at the right time of the cycle, and timing will depend on the stage of the embryos, i.e. whether they’re fertilised eggs, early embryos or blastocysts. 

Using frozen embryos

Frozen embryos can be transferred in two types of IVF frozen cycle: you can undergo treatment in an ‘artificial’ cycle using hormone therapy, or if you ovulate reliably your embryos could be replaced in your natural cycle. The pregnancy rate is unaffected by the choice and is very good with either option. 

Artificial FER uses hormones (oestradiol and progesterone) to prepare your uterus in readiness for embryo transfer. A scan is carried out to check your endometrium has responded effectively to the oestradiol. If it has, then progesterone is given which prepares your endometrium to receive the embryo(s). This timing is precise to ensure the day of transfer is optimal for embryo implantation and growth. The advantages of an artificial FER include more predictability, effectiveness in irregular cycles and a shorter time to transfer as no trial cycle is needed. 

In natural cycle FERs it is necessary to undertake a ‘trial’ cycle before an actual FER cycle. It must be possible to detect ovulation hormone surge using ovulation predictors, because this sets the day of the embryo transfer – so natural cycle FER is only suitable for women with regular cycles. 

What happens if I don't use my frozen embryos? 

If you no longer wish to have treatment but still have embryos in storage, there are several options you may wish to consider: 

Donation to another couple

Embryo donation gives hope to people who previously thought there was no treatment available to help them. The donors would not be the legal parents of any child born as a result and would have no obligation to, or rights over, that child. Recipient couples of donated embryos would be the legal parents of any offspring born as a result of treatment. 

You can learn more about embryo donation here

Donation for training purposes Care Fertility occasionally needs embryos for in-house training purposes, for example when introducing new procedures or when training new staff in the standard practices we use. Techniques include ICSI, moving eggs/embryos between dishes, freezing/thawing of embryos and biopsy of embryos. Any training records would be reversibly anonymised by using only your clinic ID number.
Donation to research If your Care Fertility clinic participates in research they can provide details of the research projects involved.
Discard embryos This involves removal of embryos from storage and allowing them to perish.