Eggs frozen at 40 pay off for fertility clinic clients

WOMEN are freezing their eggs as late as the age of 40 to give themselves more time to find a partner or become financially secure enough to raise a baby by themselves.

The GCRM fertility clinic in Glasgow confirmed that two clients who froze their eggs at 40 have recently given birth to healthy babies, while a third who stored her eggs in her late 30s is also pregnant.

Women are encouraged to freeze their eggs before the age of 35, when fertility usually begins to decline.

But clinics say most women are doing so when they know their chance of successfully having a child is already reducing.

A business consultant from Scotland, who froze her eggs when she was 40, said she had always thought she would meet a suitable partner and start a family in her 30s, and that she had found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that if she were going to have a child, it would need to be via a sperm donor.

The woman, did not want to be named, said: “I was unlucky in love.

“There was a process of grieving that I would not have a child out of love.”

The woman, who gave birth to a little girl nine weeks ago, said: “Once she was born, I knew that everything else was irrelevant. She is my joy. I know I will find a way and that we will be okay.”

Doctors at GCRM advised her that the chances of success were small and initially tried to dissuade her from the treatment, but the City worker underwent testing that showed her ovaries were producing eggs as healthy as those of a woman of 35.

The woman, who had an unhappy marriage lasting ten years, used her frozen eggs to have a child, now ten months old, with her new partner.