Egg freezing  is becoming a popular option for women who plan to start a family later in life. Many reasons exist for considering egg freezing or oocyte vitrification: life trajectories driven by careers, lack of a partner, financial issues, disease, etc. Once the decision has been made to “freeze” eggs, women sometimes feel compelled to do the procedure as soon as possible due to fears of aging eggs. However, this rush might result in a less-than-desired outcome–that’s what I believe happened to Kate.

A few months ago, Kate, a 38 years old patient who just failed a frozen embryo transfer came to my office. She told me that she had frozen her eggs a few years ago but only had one embryo after her embryologist unfroze her eggs last month for fertilization. The pregnancy had not taken place after transfer.

I’ve seen many other similar cases in which women were in a hurry to deposit eggs without any preparation. They did it while they were under a lot of stress, while they were living unhealthy lifestyles. If our body not healthy, our cells aren’t healthy–and neither are our eggs. Preparing our bodies before we deposit our eggs is extremely important.

Kate listened to me and changed her lifestyle, went through acupuncture treatments and took herb supplements to improve circulation and balance hormones. This helped her become less stressed and healthier–which in turn improved her egg quality before she started another round of IVF. On the third month of our treatment plan, she became pregnant naturally. Now she is on her fifth month of pregnancy.

Kate’s story told us that preparing the body for egg banking is very important. Some women might end up not using deposited eggs for many years while they’re waiting for the right time to have a child. By that time, their ovarian reserve and egg quality may be already very low. They could lose the chance to have a biological baby if the quality of their frozen eggs are not good enough for them to conceive. In that case, it is not only a financial loss but a loss of biological time.