Fertility assessment and consultation

The first step in your gamete freezing journey is a fertility assessment. This will provide you with the answers you need to make empowered choices about your future fertility.

For those with ovaries, this includes an anti-Mullerian hormone (AMH) blood test followed by an antral follicle count (AFC) internal scan. Together, these provide an accurate measure of your fertility health and your likely response to the medication used in fertility treatments.

Stimulating the ovaries

Following your fertility assessment, you'll attend some nurse planning appointments where we'll show you how to use the medication required throughout your gamete freezing treatment.

This begins with a daily injection administered at home to stimulate follicular growth within the ovaries. This increases the number of gametes that are collected.

In most cases, this is a 14-day course of hormone medication.

Suppressing the natural menstrual cycle

A second daily injection is then added at home to stop natural hormone production and control when your gametes are released.

Monitoring progress

Pelvic scans will be performed to check the development and growth of the follicles in the ovaries. This will determine when the gametes are collected from the follicles.

Gamete retrieval

Once the follicles have reached the correct size, an injection will be given to mature the gametes for collection. A needle is then gently guided through the vaginal wall to capture the gametes one by one. Don’t worry, you will be sedated for this part of the procedure to ensure you dont feel any pain or discomfort.

Gamete freezing

Healthy gametes are then rapidly cooled using a method known as vitrification. They are then stored safely in liquid nitrogen until you're ready to use them.

We'll first carry out a gamete analysis to assess whether you have viable sperm to freeze. We'll also screen for any infection diseases, such as HIV or hepatitis C. The results of these screening tests won't stop you from freezing your gametes, but will ensure that any affected samples are stored separately from others to prevent contamination.

Following these tests, you'll need to produce a fresh sample which will be frozen. In most cases, you'll come into your chosen TFP Fertility clinic where you'll produce your sample in one of our production rooms. If this causes you some anxiety, you also have the option of producing your sample at home - we just ask that it's brought back to the clinic within one hour.

If you’re unable to produce a sample, we can also retrieve it using a procedure called surgical gamete retrieval.

Once we have your gamete sample, this is mixed with a cryoprotectant to protect the gametes from damage during freezing.

Before freezing, the gamete sample is divided into separate containers so that it can be used in multiple treatments, if required. The samples are then rapidly cooled using a method called vitrification and safely stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen.