Embryo Banking for Having Children in the Future
In today’s fast-paced world, balancing career growth and personal life can often feel like a constant battle. For many ambitious couples, the pressure to start a family due to the biological clock often conflicts with their professional goals. Embryo banking, also known as embryo freezing, allows couples or individuals to preserve their fertility by storing embryos for when the time is right. Embryo banking is often used for couples or individuals who are beginning their family-building journey and wish to have several children, or who are not quite ready yet to have children but want to do so in the future. With embryo banking, fertility is preserved and can successfully extend into the later thirties and forties. Embryo banking can also be used in cases of medical necessity.
What is Involved in Embryo Banking?
Embryo banking involves creating embryos through in vitro fertilization (IVF) and then freezing those embryos for future use. Embryos can be stored safely for years using an advanced cryopreservation technology called vitrification. The Fertility Institute of NJ & NY has used vitrification to help numerous couples preserve their fertility. With flexible hours and all services offered onsite, we make the process as convenient and comfortable as possible for our patients.
Stage 1: Ovarian Stimulation
The first phase of IVF is called controlled ovarian hyperstimulation (COH), in which various combinations of injectable hormones are used to stimulate a woman’s ovaries into preparing several eggs.
Every egg develops within a sac of fluid called a follicle, and hormonal stimulation of the ovaries results in the development of several follicles. We carefully monitor this process, using blood tests to measure hormone levels and pelvic ultrasound examinations of the ovaries to assess the size of the growing follicles, adjusting the dosage of medications as necessary.
Stage 2: The Egg Retrieval
When ovarian monitoring indicates that the eggs are ready, a procedure called an egg retrieval is performed.
This is done here at the Fertility Institute in our procedure room, under anesthesia. The procedure takes approximately 15 minutes. A sperm sample is obtained, usually on the day of the egg retrieval.
Stage 3: Fertilization and Embryo Culture
The eggs are placed in a special culture medium in the lab. Several hours later, the eggs are inseminated or injected (ICSI) with sperm. Successful fertilization of the eggs can be seen under a high-powered microscope the next day. The early embryos are cultured under carefully-controlled conditions in the Fertility Institute’s embryology laboratory.
Stage 4: PGT Biopsy & Cryopreservation
When the embryos are 5-7 days old, each embryo undergoes a biopsy for preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) to assess whether each has a normal or abnormal set of chromosomes, and each embryo is cryopreserved via vitrification. The embryos can be stored indefinitely, in a deep freeze, until ready to be used at any point in the future.
Stage 5: Embryo Transfer
Once the couple or individual decides to begin the process of building or expanding their family, they can choose to initiate a cycle known as an FET or frozen embryo transfer cycle. To transfer a frozen embryo, the woman’s uterus is first prepared using hormone medications, and monitored via blood and ultrasound to ensure an optimal uterine environment.
When the uterus is ready, an embryo is thawed by our experienced laboratory staff and prepared to be transferred from the laboratory into the uterus. The embryo transfer procedure itself is performed by one of the Fertility Institute’s physicians, and is a gentle and usually-painless procedure.
The embryo is loaded into a long, thin, soft tube called a catheter, which is then threaded through the natural opening of the woman’s cervix and guided to a spot near the top of her uterus, all monitored via ultrasound. Once the soft tip of the catheter reaches its intended destination, the embryo is gently deposited within the uterus.
How is Embryo Banking Different from Egg Freezing?
Eggs are single cells, and are typically frozen to allow women, usually single or not yet in a committed relationship, to extend her fertility. Embryo banking involves sperm, and the creation of embryos which are ready to implant and grow to a full-term pregnancy. Research has shown that frozen embryos have a higher survival rate and a higher chance of pregnancy than frozen eggs. With embryo freezing, patients also have the opportunity to undergo preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) to select the healthiest embryos, which may help improve implantation and clinical pregnancy rates. PGT can be performed on embryos, but not on eggs.
Why Would I Choose Embryo Banking?
Patient Erica: My husband and I knew we wanted to be parents someday, but we wanted to focus on our careers and travel in our early thirties. Embryo banking gave us the opportunity to create embryos with “young” eggs and sperm and have the embryos PGT-tested, and allowed us to enjoy life with some peace of mind knowing we have young, genetically-normal embryos being stored for when we decided to start our family.
Patient Charlotte: My husband and I are in our mid-thirties and we’re ready to start having children. We want to have 3 children. But I know my eggs and his sperm will “worsen” with age, and by the time we’re trying for our 2nd or 3rd child we’ll be in our later thirties or forties, and who knows what our egg and sperm quality will be at that age. So we’re doing IVF now to freeze embryos for the future, just in case. And it’s also nice to know that when I get pregnant in my forties, it can be with embryos that are a few years younger with a better chance of becoming a healthy child.
With embryo banking, you don’t have to compromise on your dreams of having children. Embryo banking gives you the flexibility and control to build a family on your timeline.