Egg freezing a chance to beat biological clock – expert

LONDON: Women who think they will be too busy to have children by 35 should freeze their eggs, one of the world’s leading fertility specialists has said.

Whether they hadn’t found Mr Right or their career was too important, freezing eggs offered a chance to cheat the biological clock, he said.

Dr Richard Paulson, of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said he had advised his daughters to con- sider egg freezing if they didn’t have two or three children by the age of 35.

After that age, the quality of the eggs takes “a sudden downturn” and conceiving becomes much harder.

Paulson was commenting on a US survey that found that women who had undergone egg freezing had “lessened biological clock pressure” and felt “less desperate” while dating.

It also found parents were increasingly buying the procedure as a gift for their daughters.

In the UK, the cost of freezing and storage with a fertility clinic can cost from £4 000 to £15 000 (R68 000 to R255 000).

A report by the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority has shown the procedure is in its infancy in the UK, but the number of women freezing their eggs rose from 59 in 2005 to 816 in 2014, the latest year of available records.

P a u l s o n said: “Most people want to have two or three children and if by the time they reach 30 they think they’re going to be done by 35, great.

“If not, I think they should seriously consider some type of fertility preservation, whether that’s egg freezing or embryo freezing with a suitable life partner.”

He said women were becoming “more proactive” about managing their fertility, adding: “When we first started offering egg donation about 10 years ago, a lot of the women were in their late thirties and early forties.

“Now we find they’re coming in at an earlier age. I think it’s appropriate that women should be empowered with the knowledge of the biological clock and can make decisions.”

Paulson said the society was “on the cusp” of officially recommending freezing to younger women.

In a survey, Dr Brooke Hodes-Wertz, of New York’s Langoe Medical Center, said that between 2012 and 2016, the percentage of women that froze aged 33 to 35 increased from 13 to 24 percent. – Daily Mail

After 35, egg quality takes a ‘downturn’