Older women freezing eggs as they wait for Mr Right

OLDER professional women are freezing their eggs as they bide their time and wait for "Mr Right", research in Leeds has shown.

Once they might have been worried about missing a last chance of motherhood - and made do with second best as a result.

But today for a few thousand pounds they can beat the biological clock by preserving their eggs.

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It means that even when fertility wanes, having children with sperm donated by the man of their dreams is still a possibility.

Egg freezing was originally developed to help women undergoing treatments, such as chemotherapy for cancer, that brought on an early menopause.

As the technology became more reliable, ambitious younger women started paying clinics to freeze their eggs so they could spend their fertile years focusing on jobs and careers.

Now women are turning to egg freezing later in life, not to safeguard their careers, but to take the pressure off finding the right man.

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The trend was brought to light by a Belgian survey of educated, financially secure, and mostly single women in their late 30s and 40s, all of whom had applied to have their eggs frozen.

Asked why they took the step, more than half said it was to give them more time to search for the right partner, experts at the annual meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology (Eshre) in Rome were told.

Almost 30% wanted to give a future relationship more of a chance to blossom before bringing up the subject of children.

Just over a third of the group of 15 women said they were taking out insurance against future infertility.

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Study leader Dr Julie Nekkebroeck, from the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at the Free University of Brussels, said: "We found that they all had partners in the past, and one was currently in a relationship, but they had not fulfilled their desire to have a child because they thought that they had not found the right man.

"The average age that the women thought they would use their frozen oocytes (eggs) was 43.4 years, an age at which, for most women, there is considerable difficulty in achieving a spontaneous conception."

Most of the women would still prefer to become pregnant naturally if they found a suitable partner, she said.

Until a few years ago, egg freezing was a slow process with a success rate as low as 2%.

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Today rapid "dry-freezing" vitrification techniques mean that frozen eggs can be as good as fresh ones. However, the cost of egg freezing is around 3,000 per attempt, and up to three treatment cycles may be needed to preserve enough eggs. Research has also shown that the chances of egg freezing working declines with age.

Another study presented at Eshre looked at the attitudes of two groups of young female students to egg freezing.

Eight out of 10 of the first group of 98 medical students said they would be prepared to freeze their eggs to help their careers. This view was shared by less than half of the second group of education and sports students.

Dr Srilatha Gorthi, from the Leeds Centre for Reproductive Medicine, who conducted the survey, said: "Career considerations were given as the commonest reason to delay starting a family in group A, followed by financial stability and marriage or a stable relationship. However, in group B, financial stability came first, followed by a stable relationship and then career reasons.

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"We think that this is the first time that young women's attitudes to egg freezing have been studied in this way."

Clare Lewis-Jones, from the charity Infertility Network UK, warned women not to think of egg freezing as a magic solution to the menopause.

"Many women now choose to delay having children and although they should be supported in that choice, they need to be aware of the potential problems they may encounter when they do decide the time is right for motherhood," she said.

"Age has an impact on male as well as female fertility and when they do meet Mr Right, they may well find that he has fertility problems. They also need to be aware that using fertility treatment is no guarantee of success."

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