Do you have to stop T if you’re going to freeze your eggs?
New case study (and anecdotal experience) says no!
For trans people who want to contribute to a pregnancy without having to be pregnant themselves, egg harvesting and cryopreservation have always been great options. A well-studied protocol, completed in partnership with a fertility clinic, typically results in over a dozen mature, healthy eggs that can be frozen (cryopreserved) and later used in IVF.
When a partner carries the pregnancy, this process is called reciprocal IVF or co-IVF. Both partners get to have a biological connection to the pregnancy: one by contributing half of the genetic material and the other by gestating and giving birth.
Pretty cool, right?
Until very recently, though, there was one complication with this method. If you were on T, you had to stop taking it in order to regain a cycle and go through the rigorous hormonal protocol that essentially “tricks” the body into releasing more than one mature egg at a time. Many trans people have been willing to make this sacrifice in order to build a family, but it’s not a small one; going off of T can be physically and emotionally challenging.
But in 2022, we here at Trans Fertility Co. started to hear about cases where fertility clinics were doing egg harvesting cycles without the patient stopping T. A two-patient case study was published that year as well, concurring with what we were seeing in community: these cycles seemed to be successful, resulting in enough healthy eggs to proceed with embryo creation, uterine implantation, and live births. We didn’t want to write about it yet, though, because there simply wasn’t enough evidence to show that this might be a viable option for everyone.
However, one case study isn’t necessarily enough to build strong recommendations around. So we were excited to see an additional case study published last October by researchers at the Center for Infertility and Reproductive Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They documented three cases where transgender men were on T up to or during egg harvesting, collecting an average of 16 mature eggs per patient. For reference, fertility doctors typically say that 12 is considered a successful cycle.
We are still in the early days of this protocol, however, so we can’t definitely say that there are no differences between eggs harvested while on T vs not, but this is really exciting news in the world of trans fertility!
Check out both case studies here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35789719/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10815-025-03699-9
