Women rush to freeze eggs and delay motherhood

London: A growing number of women in London are freezing their eggs to delay motherhood.

Fertility clinics report a rise in demand for a new technique that allows women to store their eggs until they have found Mr Right. The demand is revealed in BBC current affairs programme Inside Out broadcast recently.

The London Bridge Fertility Centre is among several clinics in the capital offering the treatment, known as vitrification. It is more successful than traditional methods but has only been available for a few months.

More than 200 women have contacted the centre about the procedure since it started providing it in October. Forty of these are now in the process of having their eggs put on ice until they are ready to become mothers.

They include Abby Rudland, who is single and in her early thirties but keen to be a mother one day.

She wants to take advantage of the procedure as "an insurance policy".

Rudland, a webwriter, said: "I'm hugely aware of my biological clock ticking. I think about it a lot.

"I think about the fact that as you get older it gets harder to have a baby and that your chances of miscarriage are higher when you get older. I have to be quite strict with myself not to panic and to be calm and think it will all turn out fine and it will happen."

Traditional techniques carry a high risk of damage to eggs because of the impact of ice crystals but survival rates for vitrification are as high as 90 per cent.

The process involves removing excess water from the eggs, which are then put individually in a solution for protection. They are then fast-frozen in liquid nitrogen in a process that lasts only minutes before being stored at temperatures of about minus 150 degrees Celsius. Eggs can be stored for 10 years. It costs £5,000 (Dh36,980). Women who want their eggs frozen have to undergo the same process as others undergoing fertility treatment. Doctors give the patient hormones to ensure that enough eggs can be collected for freezing.

Only four babies in Britain have been born using frozen eggs.

The first was five-year-old Emily Perry. Her mother Helen chose to freeze her eggs after she and husband Lee found out they were unable to conceive naturally.

The Shropshire couple, who had been married for 17 years, visited a private fertility clinic because their religious beliefs barred them from National Health Service treatment.

They decided to use "natural" IVF where individual eggs are fertilised one by one. Helen has said that the process of egg-freezing was an "emotional rollercoaster". But she added that she has no regrets about her decision. "I've wanted kids since I was little," said Helen. "It was absolutely worth it."

Emily was "conceived" in a laboratory at the Midland Fertility Services in the West Midlands. The egg that produced her was deep frozen for six months before being fertilised. Since then, the clinic has helped create twins from frozen eggs - the pair were born in 2005 to a 36-year-old mother.