Thinking about growing your family can be an exciting thing to consider, but it can also bring up some practical questions…especially if fertility treatment is part of your path. One of the most common questions that people ask is: “If I want more than one child, what is the best approach that will give me the strongest chance?” This is an excellent question, because IVF and other fertility treatments can often take a lot of time and consume much of your emotional energy. While there is not treatment that can guarantee a child or specific number of children, planning ahead from the very start is one way that you can make the journey smoother and a bit more predictable. One of the best strategies that is well-supported by data involves banking embryo through IVF. This gives many families the opportunity to return later and attempt another pregnancy using embryos that were made at a younger age. Let’s look into this process and find out if it may be the right choice for you.
Which Fertility Options Can Help You Grow Your Family?
Across the United States, family sizes are decreasing. However, the average household still has approximately 2 children.1 When you’re thinking about the possibility of having more than one child, it can really help to understand all the different fertility options that you have available and the ways that each one can support your goals of growing your family in the future. Some of the most common treatment options include IVF using your own eggs, IVF with donor eggs, IVF with donor sperm, embryo donation, the cryopreservation (or freezing) of eggs or embryos, intrauterine insemination (IUI), and therapeutic donor insemination (TDI). Each of these approaches has its unique strengths, and some may create eggs or embryos that can be stored and used for potential children in the future.
Undergoing IVF using your own eggs can produce multiple embryos. The number and quality of the embryos depends on certain factors like your age and ovarian reserve. Some people may produce many eggs in a single cycle, while others may create fewer.2
IVF with donor eggs often results in several high-quality embryos. This isn’t by accident. Egg donors are usually younger in age and have undergone a thorough medical screening process, which means that their eggs tend to be healthy and more capable of developing into good quality embryos.3
A helpful way to think about this is to imagine that each IVF retrieval is like gathering ingredients for a big family meal. The more ingredients you collect all at once, the more complete meals you can prepare later. In fertility terms: one retrieval often leads to multiple eggs, which can become multiple embryos, which translates into more opportunities for future children without the need for repeating the entire IVF process.
Why Frozen Embryos Can Make Planning for Siblings Easier
If you need IVF and are hoping to have more than one child, one of the best tools to maximize the chance of having children in the future is embryo freezing. This process uses a specific technique called vitrification, which is a form of rapid freezing that helps protect embryos from damage.4 The end result of this process is a highly stable, well-preserved embryo that remains viable months or years) later. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) recognizes embryo freezing as a well-established method for protecting future family-building options.
The process of freezing embryos provides several significant benefits when planning for multiple children. First, the embryos stay the same biological age as the day they were frozen, which can be important as age (and thus age-related infertility) increases. Second, frozen embryo transfer (FET) cycles can be easier on the body and typically involve fewer medications tah egg retrieval/fresh embryo transfer cycles. Frozen embryo transfers are also less costly than repeating a full IVF cycle.2
Why Frozen Embryos Often Make Future Family Planning Easier
When you’re thinking ahead about the possibility of having more than one child, it is a good idea to understand the difference between fresh IVF cycles and frozen embryo transfers. A fresh cycle is often described as “starting from zero” because the entire process must be started all over again, from scratch. You will need to stimulate the ovaries with medication, undergo egg retrieval, fertilize the eggs, monitor embryo development, and then prepare for a transfer. The process tends to be more physically, emotionally, and financially taxing than frozen embryo transfers. Frozen embryo transfers tend to be much less costly and are less physically demanding on the body. Once embryos are frozen, each frozen embryo becomes another chance at pregnancy without the need for repeating the entire IVF process.
While it cannot guarantee a future pregnancy, embryo cryopreservation provides strong predictability, especially for those planning on multiple children. Freezing eggs can also be very helpful for preserving fertility. However, eggs still need to be inseminated with sperm, fertilize, and make it the blastocyst (embryo) stage. It is impossible to know in advance how many embryos will form. Frozen embryos are much more predictive of future success.4
It’s also important to remember that long-term storage involves decisions about consent, egg/embryo disposition, and how long eggs or embryos will be kept. These are usually easy conversations with your clinic, and having frozen embryos available can often give families a better sense of comfort and security about the choices they will be able to make in the future.
A Science-Based Strategy for Welcoming Future Children
When it comes to growing your family through fertility treatment, there’s no single “perfect” option that is going to work for everyone, but the latest research and clinical experiences are consistently pointing to a strategy that will lead to the highest chance of welcoming more than one child over time. This involves creating embryos through IVF (whether using your own eggs or donor eggs or sperm) and then freezing any surplus embryos using the vitrification process. Those frozen embryos become your future opportunities, and are available to you whenever you’re ready for another pregnancy.
One of the biggest advantages of this process is that the embryos remain the same biological age as the day they were created, giving you a much stronger chance at a future pregnancy, even if years pass between pregnancies. Every person’s situation is unique, and creating the best family-building plan depends on many different factors like age, overall health, donor choices and preferences, and your long-term family goals. Working with a fertility specialist can help you weigh all these details and create a plan that is well-informed and matches your hopes and goals.
References:
- Statista. U.S. average number of own children per family with own children 1960-2023. Statista. Published November 28, 2025. ↩︎
- NICE. Fertility Problems: Assessment and Treatment.; 2013. ↩︎
- American Society for Reproductive Medicine Practice Committee. Gamete and embryo donation guidance. Fertility and Sterility. 2024;122:799–813. ↩︎
- Nagy ZP , Shapiro D, Chang CC. Vitrification of the human embryo: a more efficient and safer in vitro fertilization treatment. Fertility and Sterility. 2020;113(2):241-247. doi:10.1016/j.fertnstert.2019.12.009 ↩︎
