1. Assessment:
At your initial assessment with one of our consultants, we review your personal and family medical history, discuss your future reproductive goals, and we will be able to advise you if egg freezing request can be supported.
2. Personalised plan:
We create a personalised stimulation plan designed to optimise the number and quality of eggs retrieved. You will then start an IVF process which could take 2-3 weeks.
3. Suppressing your Natural Menstrual Cycle Hormones:
As a first step, you will be given medication either an injection which you can administer yourself daily or a tablet to suppress your natural menstrual cycle. In most, the tablet or the injection is commenced during the treatment cycle and will be continued until you are ready for egg retrieval procedure. For some, the injection may have to be started from the previous cycle.
4. Stimulating your ovaries using medications:
Gonadotrophins are used for stimulating the ovaries to help the growth of many egg containing sacs (follicles) together. You will take gonadotropins as a daily injection for around 9-14 days. There are various types of gonadotropin preparations available commercially and our consultants will guide you to choose the appropriate ones based on your circumstances.
5. Follicular tracking:
Our team will closely monitor your progress throughout the ovarian stimulation by doing trans-vaginal ultrasound scans and, sometimes with blood tests measuring hormone levels.
6. Trigger injection:
Between 34 and 36 hours before your eggs harvesting, you will be given a hormone injection to help your eggs mature and for them to be ready to be released. This depends on the treatment protocol and can be either a GnRH analogue (Buserelin) and/or human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG).
7. Transvaginal Oocyte Recovery (eggs harvesting):
You will be given conscious sedation medications and pain killers through your vein. A hollow needle attached to the ultrasound scan probe is used to collect the eggs vaginally from the follicles on each ovary. Very occasionally, this may have to be performed trans-abdominally (through your abdomen). You will be discharged home the same day, and you may experience some period-like cramps, feel a little sore and bruised and/or experience a small amount of bleeding for a few days.
8. Eggs Freezing:
The collected eggs will then be prepared by Embryologists in the laboratory, and mature eggs will be frozen by a process called vitrification before being safely stored, ready for you to use in the future.
9. Update telephone call:
We will make a telephone call to you to update you of the number of eggs stored
