YOUNGER women thinking of delaying motherhood should freeze their eggs in expectation of declining fertility in later life, embryologists say.

Women who donated eggs in their thirties and stored them would stand a greater chance of having a healthy baby than if they tried to conceive naturally in their forties, Gillian Lockwood, a fertility expert, said.

Dr Lockwood is due to tell a British Fertility Society conference in Glasgow today that those in a position to have children at the right time should be encouraged to do so but more must done to help women who delay pregnancy.

More and more women are choosing to start families later in life and, for the first time, more children are now born to women in their thirties than in their twenties.

“Social factors are causing women to delay pregnancy. The older you are, the more difficult it becomes to get pregnant and the greater the chance of a miscarriage or abnormality,” she said. “It’s the age of the egg, not the age of the womb, which determines the miscarriage rate. Women in their thirties should be encouraged to consider freezing their eggs.”

Dr Lockwood, who is medical director of Midland Fertility Services, added: “The last thing I want to do is to discourage any young woman who wants to be a mother from starting a family because she thinks technology will save her,” she said. “But it’s important that she knows this technology is available.”

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