Fertility on ice

More women who are not yet ready to have children are freezing their eggs. But the costs are high and the success rate varies.

- Susan Hely

Katie, a 34-year-old single friend, recently presented her parents with a deal that could see them become grandparents one day.

Katie feels her biological clock is ticking. She wants to freeze her eggs while she is still reasonably fertile to maximise her chances of having a healthy baby. She doesn't have a partner to build a family with but hopes she will have one in the future.

To afford the $10,000 cost of removing, freezing and storing her eggs, Katie convened a meeting with her parents, who have long been divorced, asking them to pay a third each. She would pay a third herself.

Her parents, in their 60s, are keen to be grandparents and said yes. It is challenging for women to work out how to cover the high costs. Katie, who earns around $150,000 a year as a town planner, went to the bank of mum and dad because, despite her good salary, she took out a mortgage two years earlier and has been hit with a special $30,000 levy from the body corporate.

A survey of women freezing their eggs in the US found that a third sought financial support, mainly from family members.

Keep options open

Freezing for non-medical reasons is catching on. Women want to extend their fertility. Some, like Katie, are yet to find the right man and if they wait to conceive naturally their declining fertility could be a problem.

Others who are in a relationship want to give it more time to develop, rather than rushing in to have a baby because of their ticking clock, or they want to further their education and career first.

Women might be biologically programmed to be at their most fertile in their late 20s, but they may not be financially or emotionally ready to have a baby, says Giselle Crawford, an obstetrician and gynaecologist at Monash IVF.