If egg freezing once sounded like science fiction, those days are over.

Egg freezing for medical reasons — often women undergoing chemotherapy — has been possible for decades. Some 5,000 babies have been born from eggs that were frozen, thawed and fertilized; however the costs and the odds of frozen eggs resulting in a baby decline as a woman ages. 

In 2012, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine decided egg freezing was no longer an experimental procedure. That opened the door for clinics to market it to women who don’t have a medical reason to do it but are simply worried about their declining fertility — what’s being dubbed as “social” egg freezing.

Egg freezing is a complicated and physically demanding process involving self-injections with hormones (for up to two weeks to stimulate ovaries to get as many mature eggs as possible), a surgical procedure to retrieve those mature eggs,  along with a host of potential side effects along the way.

The process also isn’t cheap. One round averages about $12,000, and multiple rounds may be needed. No insurance companies cover egg freezing; however, there are some companies that offer to pay the costs of egg freezing for employees. Financing may be available from a company called EggBanxx as well as some fertility clinics. 

Doctors prefer that women freeze their eggs before their mid-30s. Preserved eggs offer women hope for beating the biological clock. But you can’t escape the fact that your body will continue to age. The older a woman is when she freezes her eggs and when she uses them with in vitro fertilization, the lower her chances of success.

So far very few women who’ve frozen their eggs since the experimental label was lifted in 2012 have gone back to try to use them. Of the 353 egg-thaw cycles in 2012, only 83 resulted in live births. In 2013, there were 414 thaw cycles and 99 live births. “Live birth” is not babies born — it means delivery of one or more infants, so it can include twins.

Overall, the success rate of live births from frozen eggs has remained consistently pretty low, at about 20 to 24 percent since 2009. Finding the right person to embark on a partnership and parenthood  with is the most common challenge which is why this technology will become normalized, like in vitro fertilization in the near future. Years will pass before there’s sufficient data showing us whether egg freezing actually helps most of the women doing it fulfill their dreams of motherhood.

Bottom Line: Your body does not care if you are dating the wrong guy. … Your body and your eggs just keep getting older, which is why freezing them is a pretty smart idea because it gives you a little bit more time.