There is a lot more interest in fertility preservation today than there was even five years ago, and a fair amount of that interest is coming from women who are not facing any specific medical issue; they are simply thinking ahead. That shift in thinking has made the conversation around egg freezing more common and, in some ways, more practical. What was once considered a niche procedure is now part of mainstream reproductive planning, and Dubai, in particular, has seen a noticeable rise in the number of women actively looking into it.
That said, knowing the process from start to finish, not just the broad idea of it, but the actual sequence of what happens, tends to make the whole thing feel far less daunting. People often come in with a general sense that it involves hormones and a procedure of some kind, but the details between those two points are what usually prompt the most questions.
What Happens Before the Actual Treatment Begins
Before any medication or procedure is involved, there is a consultation phase that carries more weight than many people expect. A fertility specialist will review your full medical history, ask about your menstrual cycle patterns, and order blood tests to check hormone levels, including AMH (anti-Müllerian hormone), FSH, LH, and estradiol. An ultrasound is also done to assess ovarian reserve, essentially a count of the resting follicles in both ovaries, which gives the doctor a realistic picture of how your ovaries are likely to respond to stimulation.
This part matters because it directly shapes the treatment plan. Two women of the same age can have quite different ovarian reserves, which means the medication protocol and the number of cycles recommended may differ significantly between them. A doctor who skips or rushes this assessment is not doing you any favors.
Consultation fees in Dubai typically fall between AED 400 and AED 500, and the initial diagnostics can add another AED 500 to AED 1,500 depending on what is included in the panel. Some clinics bundle these into a package; others bill them separately, so it is worth asking upfront.
The Stimulation Phase and What to Expect Week by Week
Once the baseline assessments are done and a protocol is agreed upon, the active part of the process begins. For roughly 10 to 14 days, you will take hormone injections, usually self-administered, that tell your ovaries to produce multiple follicles rather than the single egg a natural cycle would yield. The goal is to retrieve as many mature eggs as possible in one cycle, since not every egg that is retrieved will survive the freeze, thaw, fertilization, and implantation process later on. Fertility specialists generally recommend having 15 to 20 mature eggs in storage for a reasonable chance of a future pregnancy, and depending on your ovarian reserve, that may or may not happen in one cycle.
This is something that comes up more often than expected: women assume one cycle will be enough, and sometimes it is, but not always. For women over 35 or those with a lower ovarian reserve, two cycles may be needed to reach an adequate number. That has a direct impact on the overall IUI treatment cost, which in the UAE starts from around AED 15,500 per cycle and varies based on individual medication requirements and clinic.
Throughout the stimulation phase, you will have monitoring appointments every two to three days, blood tests, and ultrasounds to track how the follicles are developing and to check hormone levels. These visits allow the doctor to adjust the medication dose in real time if needed. People miss this sometimes: the monitoring is not just a formality; it is how a clinic catches cases where the ovaries are responding too aggressively and prevents a complication called ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS).
For women thinking about fertility preservation in Dubai, this monitoring phase is also the period where you get a clearer sense of how your body is responding and what the retrieval is likely to yield.
The Retrieval, Vitrification, and Storage
When the follicles reach the right size, typically around 18 to 20mm, a trigger injection is given to prompt the final maturation of the eggs, and the retrieval is scheduled for 34 to 36 hours later. The procedure itself takes about 20 to 30 minutes and is done under sedation, so you are not awake for it. A specialist uses an ultrasound-guided needle to extract the eggs from the follicles through the vaginal wall. Most women feel tired and mildly uncomfortable for a day or two afterward, but there is no major recovery period in most cases.
The eggs that are retrieved are then assessed in the laboratory. Only mature eggs are frozen. The freezing method used in modern clinics is called vitrification a process where the eggs are cooled so rapidly, within milliseconds, that water inside the egg turns into a glass-like solid rather than forming ice crystals. Ice crystals are what damaged eggs in older slow-freeze methods, which is why survival rates have improved so dramatically over the past decade.
Once frozen, the eggs are stored in liquid nitrogen tanks at -196 degrees Celsius. UAE regulations currently allow storage for up to 10 years, with the possibility of extension for another 10 years, subject to annual consent and renewal. There is an annual storage fee after the first year, which typically starts from around AED 1,950 at accredited clinics, though this varies.
ART Fertility Clinics
ART Fertility Clinics, part of IVI RMA Global, offers egg freezing in the UAE network with protocols tailored to each patient’s hormone profile and ovarian response with packages that frequently include ovarian stimulation medication, which is often billed separately elsewhere, providing clearer all-in pricing for the core cycle.
