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Fertility preservation

Fertility preservation involves freezing your eggs, sperm, embryos or reproductive tissue to help you achieve future family building goals.

Fertility preservation involves the freezing of eggs, sperm or embryos to be safely stored so they can be used in potential future fertility treatments. Preserving your fertility can be a reassuring option if you think you might like to start your family further in the future.

There are a number of reasons why you might be considering fertility preservation, such as:

  • You are not ready to start your family yet; maybe you haven’t met the right partner yet, you don’t feel financially or emotionally ready to have a baby or you have other life plans such as a career you want to pursue first.
  • If you are going to be undergoing medical treatment, for example a vasectomy, or certain types of cancer treatment including chemotherapy and radiotherapy
  • If you identify as transgender; you may want to preserve your fertility before you start hormone therapy or have gender-affirming surgery

Whatever your reason, we understand that preserving your fertility is a deeply personal decision. Our dedicated teams are on hand to support you with your fertility preservation decision and tailor your treatment to achieve your family building goals.

Freezing and storage

Ovarian stimulation is carried out in the same way as IVF. Fertility drugs are used to stimulate your ovaries, this maximises the number of eggs you will produce in your cycle for us to collect and store for you. We then carefully prepare your eggs for freezing by placing them into a special preservation medium. Those suitable will be frozen for possible future use. Hundreds of babies have been born worldwide using frozen and thawed mature eggs, and we're one of the first clinics in the UK to have introduced a super-cooling technique for egg freezing called vitrification, which substantially improves egg survival rates. 

Sperm freezing and sperm storage is a simple way of preserving your sperm until you wish to start a family. Like egg freezing and embryo freezing, freezing sperm allows men to save their sperm if they need to delay conception.

You can preserve your fertility by creating embryos, either with your partner or donor sperm/eggs. These can be transferred when you’re ready to start your family in the future.

How long can I store my eggs, sperm or embryos for?

UK law permits you to store your eggs, embryos, sperm, ovarian or testicular tissue for use in treatment for up to 55 years from the date they are first placed in storage, but you must renew your consent every ten years.

When you're starting out

Learn all you can about your clinic, the team, costs of treatment, how to prepare and the treatment process. There are many ways you can get the information you need:

  • Attend a fertility information event. Care Fertility regularly runs virtual information events; our team will present on treatment options and other essential information. If you have questions, you can ask them privately during the event
  • Read patent stories - it can really help to read about other people’s fertility journeys.
  • Reviews. We have lots of patient reviews on Facebook, Google and Trustpilot.
  • Social media. You can build a picture of what it's like to be a Care Fertility patient.
  • The Care Forum. Our forum is a great support tool. You can see the questions people are asking, and if you want to, you can reach out to others going through the same journey.
  • Digital brochure. You can request further information on our website, and we’ll send you our brochure.
  • Our new patient enquiry team. The team can answer your questions about costs, the IVF process, success rates, waiting times and other important information.

Your first call to Care Fertility

If you’re looking for more information and guidance, our friendly new patient enquiry team are here to help, just give them a call on 0800 564 2270. Our experts will be on hand to help between 8am and 6pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 4pm on Saturdays. 

We understand how important it is to you and will do all we can to help you feel prepared and confident to move forward when you think the time is right.

Call us now