Egg freezing: a decision that is hard to make alone

“Have you thought about freezing your eggs?”

The gynaecologist asked in passing, while she was already typing up the report. Thirty-four, no partner, healthy. She answered that she hadn’t, that she would think about it. Afterwards she sat in the car for twenty minutes before starting the engine. She didn’t understand why the question had hit her so hard. She knew the years were passing. She knew the option existed. But as long as no one had said it out loud, it could stay somewhere in the background — as something she would decide about later, when everything was clearer.

Now she was facing a question she couldn’t hand back: should she, now, while she doesn’t know whether she will ever have a child or with whom, do something that might one day make it possible? And who could she even talk to about it?

Egg freezing is a medical procedure, but the decision to do it is not only a medical one. It is a decision about a future you cannot see, made in a present that is often lonely. That is what this piece is about — not whether you should freeze your eggs, but how not to lose yourself in the question.

A decision that comes both too early and too late

Most decisions have their time. Egg freezing seems not to have one. When it makes the most biological sense, you often can’t yet imagine ever needing a “back-up”. And by the time you start asking yourself about it seriously, you can already hear the ticking of the clock everyone talks about.

That is why women often describe this decision as something that arrived at the wrong moment. Too early, because they don’t want a child now, and may not even be sure they want one at all. Too late, because it feels as if something should have been done yesterday. This tension between two times — the biological and the life one — is the heart of the matter. The biological clock and the clock of your life do not run at the same speed.

Who decides, and why

The prevailing public image is of a woman who freezes her eggs because she is putting her career first. Research does not support that image. Anthropologist Marcia Inhorn and her colleagues carried out in-depth interviews with 150 women in the United States and Israel who had chosen egg freezing without a medical reason. The great majority were single, and the main reason was not work but the fact that they had not found a partner with whom they wanted to have a child. Inhorn later called this the “mating gap” — between educated women who want an equal partner and the men who are available.

Other studies have reported something similar: women often choose to freeze because they want a child, but not alone and not with just anyone. For them, freezing is not about postponing motherhood for the sake of success, but an attempt to keep the possibility open until life brings a relationship in which a child could come.

This matters, because it changes the emotional content of the decision. It is not only about planning. It is also about sadness for a relationship that isn’t there, anger at the pressure you feel, and often shame, because it seems you have somehow “missed” something. These feelings are part of the decision, even if no one mentions them.

What egg freezing is and what it isn’t

The medical details need to be discussed with a gynaecologist or at a fertility clinic — how the procedure works, what the risks are, how many cycles you would probably need and what your test results say about your chances. Who is eligible, on what conditions and who pays are matters of rules that differ between countries and change over time. Check this with your doctor too, not on forums.

One thing is worth knowing before that conversation, though: frozen eggs are not a guarantee of a child. Professional bodies, among them the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), stress that the chances of success later depend above all on your age at the time of freezing and on the number of eggs stored. Freezing increases the chance; it does not bring certainty.

That is why the familiar metaphor of an “insurance policy” can be misleading. Insurance pays out when something goes wrong. Frozen eggs give you the chance to try — and that attempt may work or it may not. Going into the procedure expecting certainty can lead to a double disappointment later. Going into it with a clear picture of what you can gain spares you at least one of them.

Why this decision is so hard to make alone

Most of the big decisions in life are made within a relationship: moving house with a partner, a job with your family, a child with the person you will have it with. Egg freezing is often a decision a woman makes precisely when that “someone” isn’t there. And that is exactly what makes it so hard.

Friends have their opinions, but often from their own position — those with children say “just do it”, those without may avoid the subject. Your mother may ask why you waited so long, or may not talk about it at all. Colleagues at work know nothing. So a woman facing a question that concerns her body, her future and her deepest wish is often left on her own with it.

A study led by Eleni Greenwood and colleagues asked women after egg freezing whether they regretted the decision. Most did not. But where regret did appear, it was linked above all to a lower number of eggs retrieved and to women not having had enough information and emotional support. That is an important message: how you decide matters. If you have people beside you who hear you, and clear information, you are less likely to look back with bitterness later — whichever way you decide.

When there is a partner, but he isn’t ready

It isn’t always that there is no partner. Sometimes there is one, but he isn’t sure he wants a child. Or he wants one “someday”, in a few years, when work is more stable, when the flat is bigger. Then egg freezing takes on another layer: it becomes a question about the relationship. Am I freezing because I believe we will have a child together one day? Or because I am not sure we will?

A conversation like this is hard to start, because it can quickly turn into an ultimatum. A short scene (composite, not a real person):

“I was at the gynaecologist’s today. She mentioned egg freezing.”
“Why? We’ve got time.”
“You have. I’m not so sure any more.”
“Are you saying I’m pushing you?”
“No. I’m saying I’d like to know whether we’re in this together — or whether I’m the only one counting the years.”

These lines show how quickly a question about a procedure becomes a question about whether you are in the same story. It helps to approach the conversation slowly, and not at a moment when one of you is already frightened. You will find some suggestions in How to start a difficult conversation with your partner: the first three minutes decide.

Relief, or grief postponed

Women who have frozen their eggs often describe relief: as if the pressure had eased for a while. Some say they could relax more on dates, because they no longer assessed every man as a potential father. Others noticed they could focus more on themselves.

But relief can have another side. For some, freezing means being able to avoid a question they don’t want to look at: do they really want a child, and what if there isn’t one? The sadness that would come with that question is postponed — but it does not disappear. Sometimes it returns years later, when it is time to decide whether to use the eggs, or when it turns out they won’t be enough.

You can feel hope and fear, relief and sadness, the wish for a child and doubt about that wish, all at once. That is not a sign that you are confused. It is a sign that this matters to you. What it is like to carry a loss the people around you cannot see — for example the loss of the picture of how your life would unfold — is the subject of The grief nobody acknowledges: miscarriage, divorce, losing a job.

An exercise: two conversations before deciding

This exercise separates two conversations that easily get mixed up in your head: the one with your doctor and the one with yourself. The first needs information; the second needs time and honesty.

1. Write down your questions for the gynaecologist. Everything you don’t know about the procedure, your chances and the risks. Take them with you to the appointment — things are easily forgotten in the consulting room.
2. Write down your questions for yourself. Do I want a child, or do I want to postpone the decision? What would it mean if I didn’t have a child? Whose voice do I hear when I think I “ought to”?
3. Look at what is in your hands. Draw a circle and write inside it what you can influence (information, conversations, the decision), and outside it what you can’t (when you will meet a partner, how your body will respond). The circle of control tool can help with this.
4. Write two short letters to yourself ten years from now. In the first you decided to freeze; in the second you didn’t. Don’t write how it turned out — write how you feel about the way you made the decision.
5. Choose one person to read the letters to. Someone who will listen rather than persuade.

If you need a little more support in thinking it through, have a look at the questions before a big decision.

Where this view doesn’t apply

Everything I have written applies above all to women considering egg freezing without an urgent medical reason. When freezing is suggested before cancer treatment or another intervention that may threaten fertility, the situation is different. There is little time to weigh things up, and the decision comes in the middle of the shock of a diagnosis. There is no room then for letters to yourself in ten years’ time — what matters is trusting your doctors and allowing your feelings to settle later.

Nor is it true that every decision has to be mulled over at length. Some women decide to freeze quickly and without much drama, simply because it makes sense to them and they can afford it. When that is the case, there is no need to look for deeper meanings where there are none. And the reverse: if you have been asking yourself about this for years and keep going round in circles, you may need less reflection and more resolve. That difference is the subject of Thinking isn’t solving: how to tell brooding from real decision-making, and trusting your own judgement is the subject of Deciding without endless doubt: how to trust your own judgement.

And finally: therapy does not replace medical advice. It can help you understand why you get stuck on this question, but it cannot tell you what your biological chances are.

When it doesn’t turn out as you hoped

One of the hardest sides of this subject is that it may turn out there are fewer eggs than you hoped, or that later, when you try to use them, they don’t lead to a pregnancy. Then all the sadness that may have been postponed can come back. Often self-blame comes with it too: why didn’t I do it sooner, why did I wait, why did I believe.

At such a moment it is worth knowing that you decided with everything you knew and could manage at the time. A decision made in uncertainty is not wrong just because it turned out differently from what you wished. I wrote about what assisted reproduction brings and how individuals and couples experience it in Assisted reproduction and its emotional cost. And for those who find themselves facing the question of how to live if there will be no child, there is Life without children: chosen and unchosen.

What a conversation can offer

In marriage and family therapy, which I am learning, we also look at decisions through the stories we carry from our families. What did it mean to be a woman in your family? How did your mother, grandmother and aunts talk about motherhood? Was motherhood fulfilment, sacrifice or duty? Stories like these do not decide for us, but they often quietly shape what we feel when we ask ourselves whether to freeze our eggs.

In relational family therapy, Christian Gostečnik describes how we bring emotional patterns from our earliest relationships into present-day decisions. If you grew up with the message that you have to do everything yourself, you will probably carry this decision alone too — even when a conversation would help. Therapy can be one of the places where this question is not yours alone to carry. I also work with English-speaking clients, in person in Ljubljana.

What to remember

• Behind egg freezing there is often not a career but the absence of a relationship in which you would want a child.
• Frozen eggs increase the chance, they don’t bring certainty; talk to a gynaecologist about your own chances.
• Regret is more common when women lack enough information and support — so how you decide matters.
• The relief after freezing is real, but it can also postpone a grief that returns later.
• You decide on your own, but you don’t have to think it through alone.