One final thing I'd like to point out, speaking as a lawyer, is addressed to people considering taking steps to preserve their fertility who are in committed or married relationships. You may be tempted to freeze embryos over eggs, but you should perhaps consider freezing at least some eggs as well, if you can. I understand we've long been told frozen embryos have a higher success rate than frozen eggs when it comes to developing into a successful future pregnancy, but that might not necessarily be true. Please hear me out on this.
I talked with Dr. Maslow about this very issue, and she told me that, based on their data, there is no evidence to suggest that with modern technology there is any better chance of achieving pregnancy with frozen embryos than frozen eggs. Extend Fertility's Chief Marketing Officer Stephanie So confirmed this in an in-depth interview on my podcast, Sassy and Uncalled For. Now, that may seem confusing, because not every egg when fertilized will mature into an embryo that is suitable for freezing, but that will be true whether you fertilize your eggs right away or later, after they've been unfrozen. I do understand there are benefits to knowing right away how many of your eggs will mature enough after being fertilized that they can be frozen as embryos — like genetic testing that simply can't be done at the egg stage — but there are also benefits to waiting to find that out. One of those benefits is complete and total ownership.
While my story is a testament to the fact that we may not end up with as many eggs as we'd like to work with when we go through the egg freezing process, from a property rights perspective, it's important to point out that you alone own your eggs and that is just not the case when it comes to embryos. When you're doing something like this to preserve your chances of having a baby later in life, you're doing it because you don't know what the future holds. That goes for your future children and the future of your relationship.
Speaking not only as a lawyer but also as someone who never expected to get divorced, it's worth pointing out that if you freeze an embryo with your partner, you no longer have total control over what happens to that embryo because half of it belongs to the other person. And sometimes, when people get divorced, they decide they don't want to make babies with their former partner. If that happens, and you only froze embryos, you may be left without the future family you always dreamed of.
