Motherhood enters the ice age as women play the waiting game

According to new research coming out of Brussels, the numbers of the last group, desperate to take out an insurance policy against future infertility, is growing.

To some, the idea of professional women in their late 30s and 40s putting motherhood on ice is yet another worrying sign of the have-it-all generation. To Mr Shaker, chief executive of the CARE fertility clinic in Sheffield, it's just a natural extension of the services he has been offering for the last 20 years.

"These are highly motivated women who are concerned about their fertility," he says. "Deciding to have your eggs frozen is not

something anyone does on a whim and the women I see tend to have

thought long and hard about their options before they make an appointment to see me."

The recent rise in the number of women inquiring about egg freezing comes 10 years after the procedure was licensed in the UK. Originally, it was offered almost exclusively to women and young girls who were about to undergo chemotherapy or who risked premature menopause. However, the technique has been refined over the past decade, making it a much more attractive proposition for those of a certain age who find themselves financially independent, but without any prospect of settling down.

"Under previous techniques, only 50 per cent of the eggs survived," says Mr Shaker. "The odds weren't particularly great, but we have come a long way in the last few years. With rapid dry freezing, known as vitrification, now around 90 per cent of eggs survive and there is also a greater success rate in terms of pregnancy."

The first baby to be conceived using frozen eggs was born in October 2002. Helen Perry and her husband Lee, from Shropshire, had been

married for 17 years when they turned to IVF. Mrs Perry had been

diagnosed with blocked fallopian tubes and because of religious objections the couple decided against standard IVF where several

embryos are created and those not needed are discarded. Instead, they opted for the freezing procedure which allows one embryo to be transferred at a time.

The eggs had been frozen for six months when they were reimplanted and the birth of the Perry's baby daughter was heralded as yet another landmark step for fertility treatment. At the time, Dr Gillian Lockwood of Midland Fertility Services predicted that egg freezing may come to be seen as the ultimate kind of family planning.

The results of another new study, this one from the Leeds Centre for Reproductive Medicine, suggests she was right. Of the 98 young female students questioned by researchers, eight out of 10 said they would be prepared to freeze their eggs to help their careers.

However, while for those with money fertility treatment may be more accessible than it has ever been, it's not without risk. With the procedure relatively new, many experts have concerns babies born as a result of the freezing process could face problems later in life. One of them is Sir Robert Winston, who has previously questioned the wisdom of making egg freezing routinely available before its safety and effectiveness has been properly established.

"It's certainly true that because vitrification is a relatively recent development and because we don't yet have anyone who has become pregnant after their eggs have been frozen for say 10 or more years, there are many questions which we don't yet have answers to," says Mr Shaker. "We always ask the women we see to think seriously about how long they want to put off motherhood and we explain to them in very great detail all the options are available.

"From the age of 36 years old onwards, when the quality of eggs starts to deteriorate, we talk to single women about the possibility of using a fresh cycle of their eggs and a sperm donor. Some will and do want to wait until they are in a settled relationship, but for others this is a way of having the child they have always dreamed of.

"Of course, fertility treatment can be an emotional rollercoaster and we do encourage them to see a counsellor as sometimes it helps to talk through your choices with a third party. We can never give any

guarantees, but everything we do is always in the best interest of the child."