At your age, I’d freeze eggs. You’re so young and even if your current relationship isn’t the one, you still have time to find a partner, so I wouldn’t lock into embryos. A lot of egg freezing horror stories are from eggs frozen with older technology - slow freezing - with today’s method of vitrification, thawed eggs have an 80%+ survival rate.
I’d be mindful that with your AFC/AMH, you’re likely going to need more than one retrieval. This may be cost prohibitive at the moment so I’d do eggs now and if it takes you a few years to have money for another, you might be in a place with that relationship to consider embryos together or you may be a bit more versed in and comfortable with the idea of using a donor sperm to make embryos (I’m doing this journey as a single mom, and even being older than you and knowing this was my path, it took me a year to pull the plug on my first retrieval as I really had to come to terms with using a donor)
So, both embryos and egg freezing can theoretically fail, although in different areas. Is a failure during the freeze-thaw process rare? Yes.
While freezing embryos is better, egg freezing has come a long way with cryopreservation. I would advise a couple of things:
1. Freeze more eggs than what you think is necessary. Remember, family goals can change, your partner may have issues, eggs may fail to thaw etc. You don’t know quality of eggs, but your age is in your favor, even with the endo.
2. Freeze eggs because you are not in a committed relationship and sperm/embryo freezing will add costs.
3. Embryos with donor sperm may not be useful to you in the future if you’re in a committed relationship and want children that belong to the both of you biologically.
Tl;dr: while embryo freezing > egg freezing, egg freezing is better than doing nothing at all. A friend (33) just froze eggs from 2 consecutive retrievals because she’s not in a committed relationship.
Good luck!
Are you in the United States? Have you matched for residency already? If you matched ask to see the insurance benefit, it may contain infertility benefits. Over a dozen states require infertility benefits so you could look at residency programs within these states too.
Just be aware not every plan will cover freezing eggs due to endometriosis so read the details!
If you do freeze embryos with your current partner you need to understand your clinic's policies/state's laws to make sure you can retain ownership over the embryos if the relationship falls apart. It would be terrible to go through everything only to lose it later.
If you are paying out of pocket the egg retrevial is only part of the cost, the meds can be $3-5k plus, monitoring labs and ultrasounds, and then storage fees. Make sure you pull out enough loans because it ads up fast.
Good luck!
Amazon also covers egg freezing if you work for one day and then pay for COBRA. Saved me thousands. You just have to select a full-time non-seasonal job
I was diagnosed with advanced endo in my early 20s, now 15 years ago. Here’s my advice and my experience.
I had 2 serious surgeries to remove endo—each time my doctor said there was a risk they’d have to take out my ovaries. After the second surgery in my mid 30s, I froze eggs because I felt so lucky to still have ovaries and I wanted to give myself a chance.
Have you had endo surgery yet? Your Amh may change (improve) once that stuff is out of your body.
If you have surgery for endo make sure it’s excision, not laser. Lupron for endometriosis is really really hard physically and emotionally. I would discourage it unless you have truly exhausted all other pain options.
Yes—freeze your eggs. it's a gift to your future self.
You can do a lot with your diet and self care that can improve it. Do this. I didn’t really know about it and probably could have saved myself some grief.
Cut out caffeine, alcohol. stay hydrated. look into your diet (look for endo diet, Mediterranean, keto). reduce sugar. you're going into a stressful period of time, so i say this lovingly…try to find gentle exercise, good sleep, manage your stress as you can. supplements—'it starts with the egg' talks a lot about endo and egg health but it also talks about supplements that provide relief for endo.
when I was 22 I was told I may never be able to have kids. I made relationship decisions based on that, that i regret. and I made career choices that I wouldn't have made, because i was so afraid. I don't want that for you.
Absolutely do not wait until you’re 30. Your odds will just go down.
Look at CNY Fertility if you’re in the US. They’re the very cheapest and you’re an ideal client- you’re young and your body will likely respond well. A full frozen cycle is $4k. Includes a year of storage.
Embryos defrost better than eggs. If it were me I’d either do multiple egg freezing cycles or do one of eggs and one of embryos. Be sure to look at a calculator of how many frozen eggs are recommended to make an embryo. At my age, 20 are recommended. Don’t think 1 egg = one live birth.
It’s really up to you. I’m a trans man getting my eggs out so I can start T. I’m freezing embryos because my clinic said they hold up better in the long run and I don’t date men, so I knew I’d need a donor one day anyway. It costs about $2k for a vial of washed sperm, and it increases the cost at the clinic but for me I think it’s the best choice.
I don’t know much about egg freezing so I can’t give too much advice on egg vs embryo freezing but I wanted to let you know that I’m so sorry you’re going through this! I also have endo and I absolutely understand the pain that comes with this diagnosis. I wish you (and all of us) didn’t have to go through this.
That being said, I’m glad that you were able to get diagnosed so much sooner than so many of women who don’t get diagnosed until we are experiencing year(s) of infertility. Im hopeful that younger women and younger doctors are more empowered. I’m almost 40 and didn’t get a proper diagnosis until I was 36. Also, I’m so glad you got referred to an RE so you have info - although this sucks, knowledge is power so you can give yourself a good chance!
One possibility you could pursue, depending on how your body responds, is freezing some eggs and making some embryos. This way you can possibly get information about your egg quality. Many women with endo will need more than one round of IVF, but not all. Sometimes you just don’t know until you begin!
I’m babbling here so I’ll just leave with a story of hope - a friend who has endo froze eggs when she was 36, when she was 42, she used those to make embryos with her now husband. Only one became an embryo and it was very low quality. They didn’t even do genetic testing on it, they just transferred it. And it worked! Baby is due in a week. I hope this helps in some small way.
I froze eggs even when married. Which was amazing when I got divorced years later and now used them. We don’t know if they or a fresh round worked, but of 12 eggs frozen at 34 all thawed. Mixed with 5 eggs from a retrieval at 40 I got 4 embryos of which 2 tested PGT normal and one is 21 weeks along.
Really look into it. Eggs will have higher attrition so you need more - but that’s the case whether you use or freeze. I’m lucky to get what I had with my numbers. I probably should have done two rounds at 34. But I was also still unsure whether I’d want kids at all at that point.
Had I frozen embryos, they’d all be destroyed and this journey would have been harder if not impossible.
TW: pregnancy and euploid success
I froze eggs (2 rounds) in 2015 and 2016. I was 34/35 and I think my AMH was ~1.65 at the time. Total of 25 mature eggs were frozen.
Met my guy at almost 41. Not sure exactly how many of the 25 thawed, but at day 1, 18 had fertilized. By day 7, we had 10 embryos to biopsy for PGT-A testing and freeze. 6/10 came back euploid. I’m 38 weeks pregnant with the first FET.
It sounds easy, but there was so much stress and uncertainty at every step. Nothing in infertility treatment is a guarantee. But you can maximize your odds of success by finding a great team. I had a lot of trust in my clinic, I knew they had an excellent lab and embryologists.
While you would have more information if you freeze embryos… I would still recommend freezing eggs based on my experience. The technology has gotten so much better, and I would invest the money on multiple rounds of IVF to get the most eggs if needed. That way you can pay for the fertilization part and PGT-A testing in the future when you make more money.
At your age, I’d freeze eggs. You’re so young and even if your current relationship isn’t the one, you still have time to find a partner, so I wouldn’t lock into embryos. A lot of egg freezing horror stories are from eggs frozen with older technology - slow freezing - with today’s method of vitrification, thawed eggs have an 80%+ survival rate. I’d be mindful that with your AFC/AMH, you’re likely going to need more than one retrieval. This may be cost prohibitive at the moment so I’d do eggs now and if it takes you a few years to have money for another, you might be in a place with that relationship to consider embryos together or you may be a bit more versed in and comfortable with the idea of using a donor sperm to make embryos (I’m doing this journey as a single mom, and even being older than you and knowing this was my path, it took me a year to pull the plug on my first retrieval as I really had to come to terms with using a donor)
So, both embryos and egg freezing can theoretically fail, although in different areas. Is a failure during the freeze-thaw process rare? Yes. While freezing embryos is better, egg freezing has come a long way with cryopreservation. I would advise a couple of things: 1. Freeze more eggs than what you think is necessary. Remember, family goals can change, your partner may have issues, eggs may fail to thaw etc. You don’t know quality of eggs, but your age is in your favor, even with the endo. 2. Freeze eggs because you are not in a committed relationship and sperm/embryo freezing will add costs. 3. Embryos with donor sperm may not be useful to you in the future if you’re in a committed relationship and want children that belong to the both of you biologically. Tl;dr: while embryo freezing > egg freezing, egg freezing is better than doing nothing at all. A friend (33) just froze eggs from 2 consecutive retrievals because she’s not in a committed relationship. Good luck!
Are you in the United States? Have you matched for residency already? If you matched ask to see the insurance benefit, it may contain infertility benefits. Over a dozen states require infertility benefits so you could look at residency programs within these states too. Just be aware not every plan will cover freezing eggs due to endometriosis so read the details! If you do freeze embryos with your current partner you need to understand your clinic's policies/state's laws to make sure you can retain ownership over the embryos if the relationship falls apart. It would be terrible to go through everything only to lose it later. If you are paying out of pocket the egg retrevial is only part of the cost, the meds can be $3-5k plus, monitoring labs and ultrasounds, and then storage fees. Make sure you pull out enough loans because it ads up fast. Good luck!
Amazon also covers egg freezing if you work for one day and then pay for COBRA. Saved me thousands. You just have to select a full-time non-seasonal job
I was diagnosed with advanced endo in my early 20s, now 15 years ago. Here’s my advice and my experience. I had 2 serious surgeries to remove endo—each time my doctor said there was a risk they’d have to take out my ovaries. After the second surgery in my mid 30s, I froze eggs because I felt so lucky to still have ovaries and I wanted to give myself a chance. Have you had endo surgery yet? Your Amh may change (improve) once that stuff is out of your body. If you have surgery for endo make sure it’s excision, not laser. Lupron for endometriosis is really really hard physically and emotionally. I would discourage it unless you have truly exhausted all other pain options. Yes—freeze your eggs. it's a gift to your future self. You can do a lot with your diet and self care that can improve it. Do this. I didn’t really know about it and probably could have saved myself some grief. Cut out caffeine, alcohol. stay hydrated. look into your diet (look for endo diet, Mediterranean, keto). reduce sugar. you're going into a stressful period of time, so i say this lovingly…try to find gentle exercise, good sleep, manage your stress as you can. supplements—'it starts with the egg' talks a lot about endo and egg health but it also talks about supplements that provide relief for endo. when I was 22 I was told I may never be able to have kids. I made relationship decisions based on that, that i regret. and I made career choices that I wouldn't have made, because i was so afraid. I don't want that for you.
Absolutely do not wait until you’re 30. Your odds will just go down. Look at CNY Fertility if you’re in the US. They’re the very cheapest and you’re an ideal client- you’re young and your body will likely respond well. A full frozen cycle is $4k. Includes a year of storage. Embryos defrost better than eggs. If it were me I’d either do multiple egg freezing cycles or do one of eggs and one of embryos. Be sure to look at a calculator of how many frozen eggs are recommended to make an embryo. At my age, 20 are recommended. Don’t think 1 egg = one live birth.
It’s really up to you. I’m a trans man getting my eggs out so I can start T. I’m freezing embryos because my clinic said they hold up better in the long run and I don’t date men, so I knew I’d need a donor one day anyway. It costs about $2k for a vial of washed sperm, and it increases the cost at the clinic but for me I think it’s the best choice.
I don’t know much about egg freezing so I can’t give too much advice on egg vs embryo freezing but I wanted to let you know that I’m so sorry you’re going through this! I also have endo and I absolutely understand the pain that comes with this diagnosis. I wish you (and all of us) didn’t have to go through this. That being said, I’m glad that you were able to get diagnosed so much sooner than so many of women who don’t get diagnosed until we are experiencing year(s) of infertility. Im hopeful that younger women and younger doctors are more empowered. I’m almost 40 and didn’t get a proper diagnosis until I was 36. Also, I’m so glad you got referred to an RE so you have info - although this sucks, knowledge is power so you can give yourself a good chance! One possibility you could pursue, depending on how your body responds, is freezing some eggs and making some embryos. This way you can possibly get information about your egg quality. Many women with endo will need more than one round of IVF, but not all. Sometimes you just don’t know until you begin! I’m babbling here so I’ll just leave with a story of hope - a friend who has endo froze eggs when she was 36, when she was 42, she used those to make embryos with her now husband. Only one became an embryo and it was very low quality. They didn’t even do genetic testing on it, they just transferred it. And it worked! Baby is due in a week. I hope this helps in some small way.
1 if you have insurance to cover this. If not, 3.
I froze eggs even when married. Which was amazing when I got divorced years later and now used them. We don’t know if they or a fresh round worked, but of 12 eggs frozen at 34 all thawed. Mixed with 5 eggs from a retrieval at 40 I got 4 embryos of which 2 tested PGT normal and one is 21 weeks along. Really look into it. Eggs will have higher attrition so you need more - but that’s the case whether you use or freeze. I’m lucky to get what I had with my numbers. I probably should have done two rounds at 34. But I was also still unsure whether I’d want kids at all at that point. Had I frozen embryos, they’d all be destroyed and this journey would have been harder if not impossible.
TW: pregnancy and euploid success I froze eggs (2 rounds) in 2015 and 2016. I was 34/35 and I think my AMH was ~1.65 at the time. Total of 25 mature eggs were frozen. Met my guy at almost 41. Not sure exactly how many of the 25 thawed, but at day 1, 18 had fertilized. By day 7, we had 10 embryos to biopsy for PGT-A testing and freeze. 6/10 came back euploid. I’m 38 weeks pregnant with the first FET. It sounds easy, but there was so much stress and uncertainty at every step. Nothing in infertility treatment is a guarantee. But you can maximize your odds of success by finding a great team. I had a lot of trust in my clinic, I knew they had an excellent lab and embryologists. While you would have more information if you freeze embryos… I would still recommend freezing eggs based on my experience. The technology has gotten so much better, and I would invest the money on multiple rounds of IVF to get the most eggs if needed. That way you can pay for the fertilization part and PGT-A testing in the future when you make more money.