Inside Boston IVF's "Cryo Bio and Storage" room in Waltham, Massachusetts, are thousands of dreams — in the form of eggs, embryos and sperm — kept alive at a temperature of 196 degrees below zero.
Those dreams belong to families hoping for a chance at parenthood down the road.
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Katy Daly, 32, who works at a pharmaceutical company in Boston, always thought she would have children in her late 20s.
"When I turned 30, it really just caught me off guard, because that wasn't my reality. And I also didn't see it on the horizon," Daly said. "I was feeling a ton of anxiety and stress around that."
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Daly was 30 when she had her first cycle and went through a second round two years later to increase her chances. She now has about 40 eggs in storage, or roughly 20 eggs per cycle.
"I was sort of using the egg freezing process as an insurance policy," she said.
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Daly's story mirrors Yale Professor Dr. Marcia Inhorn's research in her book, "Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs."
It's the biggest qualitative study of egg freezing in the United States in which Dr. Inhorn interviewed 150 women, most of whom are heterosexual, in four different IVF clinics across the country about their experiences.
"Eighty-two percent of them froze their eggs because they were single, single, single. This was — women who didn't have partners. Their average age at the time of egg freezing was 36.6 years," Inhorn explained.
To her surprise, Inhorn found the motivating factor for the women she interviewed was not career, but what she calls a "mating gap." She said it's about women wanting "partnership, pregnancy and parenthood," but lacking "eligible, educated, equal partners to establish a family with."
Now, more women than ever are choosing to freeze their eggs.
In 2014, Boston IVF conducted 87 procedures. In 2015, that number jumped to 110. Now, every year, the facility says it conducts about 800 egg freezing procedures.
The eggs can also stay frozen indefinitely and Boston IVF does embryo transplants up until the age of 50 if the patient is healthy and they get clearance for pregnancy.
Dr. Denis Vaughan, a reproductive endocrinologist and the director of clinical research at Boston IVF, said patients who freeze their eggs under the age of 38, who freeze more than 15 eggs, have about a 70% chance of having a baby from those frozen eggs.
"The more number of eggs you freeze, the higher the success rate," Vaughan said.
The egg freezing process takes about two weeks and can be painful. Vaughan described that there are roughly 10-12 shots, plus a final "trigger shot," medications, and finally, the egg retrieval procedure, which is usually conducted under anesthesia. During the full two-week period, individuals also come in every 2-3 days for monitoring appointments.
"My first round, the needles did hurt. More so at the beginning because you're not expecting it," Daly described. "I bruised a lot more in my second round … but it was all manageable."
Daly was also able to pay for her two cycles out of pocket, but for many, cost is the biggest barrier to entry.
The cost breakdown could equate to more than $26,000. That's factoring in approximately $8,000 for the procedure, monitoring and freezing, $3,000-5,000 for the medications, between $500-$1,500 per year to store the eggs and keep them frozen, and then another $6,000-$12,000 to thaw, fertilize and create the embryos.
But Vaughan says there's growing awareness, and employees are asking for insurance that includes the option.
"About 20% of our patients who do egg freezing have coverage," he said. "Our patients who don't have private health insurance don't have coverage for egg freezing, whether it's medically indicated or not."
And while people like Daly do it as a backup plan, Vaughan says there's no guarantee it works.
"I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that egg freezing is an insurance policy," he said. "About half of the patients who freeze their eggs ultimately have success — success meaning a live birth from those frozen eggs."
And according to Vaughan, only 15-20% of patients at Boston IVF who go through the process come back to use those eggs. That's because they get pregnant naturally or their family plans change.
But still, people are willing to pay for possibility.
"This is a backup plan," Daly said. "I do have the option of trying naturally. And that will be the ideal, to not have to dip into this."
