Egg freezing is a new strategy for women who wish to preserve their fertility at an age when their eggs are most viable. We recommend women freeze their eggs in their 20's or by the age of 35. There is, however, no age limit - it all depends on the woman's body and if eggs can still be retrieved from her ovaries.

Egg freezing has only been available for roughly three years, and many women in their late 30's and 40's have recently embraced this new method for prolonging their fertility. If you wish to put off childbearing -- while preserving your fertility as it is today -- whatever your age, we invite you to come in and have your reproductive health tested.

We also recommend that you have an antral follicle count and hormonal blood tests with your annual pap smear. This will provide you with an important assessment of your fertility status and will allow you to make informed decisions about when to start a family or freeze your eggs. An antral follicle count is a sonogram that shows how many follicles (eggs) you have in reserve. This will tell us how much time you have left on your biological fertility clock.

Vitrification is a rapid-freeze method of cryopreservation which results in a 95% survival rate for eggs and embryos after thawing. In 2005, Dr. Zhang was the first doctor in the tri-state area to deliver a live birth from an oocyte frozen using vitrification. This breakthrough in fertility preservation allows women seeking reproductive tissue preservation to bank healthy eggs prior to medical treatments that may affect their fertility.

New Hope Fertility Center has the only operational donor egg bank in the U.S. using vitrification to freeze eggs.

Embryo Freezing/Banking

During many IVF cycles, women will have excess embryos that are not transferred into the uterus. We can freeze these embryos in an Embryo Bank which can eliminate the need for egg retrievals during any future cycles.

Alternatively, the frozen embryos can remain in your Embryo Bank and be used when you are ready to welcome another baby into your family. This is especially beneficial for women older than 35 whose egg quality will begin a rapid decline, potentially preventing them from becoming pregnant again naturally.

Freezing and banking embryos is also a good strategy for couples not yet ready for parenthood. This avoids patients encountering an aged egg or an older sperm when they are ready for IVF later in life.