By Wendy Tuohy
One thing Melita Boyle noticed when she returned to the dating scene, after a long-term relationship ended when she was 35, was that prospective partners made certain assumptions.
“There’s a lot of people who see women in their mid-to-late 30s and think all they want to do is have babies. It was really hard to date in that kind of environment,” said Boyle, who works in the travel industry.
For Melita Boyle, freezing her eggs at the age of 38 was “the best thing I’ve ever done”. Daughter Izzy is 18 months old.Credit: Paul Jeffers
A conversation with a psychologist planted the seed of an idea that Boyle regards as “the best thing I’ve ever done”. At 38, she decided to freeze some of her eggs.
It proved a life-changing choice. Having met her current partner a few years later, the couple decided to try for a baby using IVF with her eggs. Boyle gave birth to daughter Izzy after two IVF cycles, at age 45.
She is among the rapidly increasing number of women freezing their eggs and having successful pregnancies.
Since 2015-16, there has been a 304 per cent increase in the number of eggs in storage in Victoria alone. Most of the increase is estimated to come from elective egg freezing, rather than the more stable rate of procedures needed by women undergoing medical treatment that may jeopardise their fertility.
One reason for the growth is that dating was restricted during the pandemic, making it harder for women hoping to find and settle into relationships that may produce children, say experts including IVF medical director Dr Fleur Cattrall.
Another factor is that word is spreading that the chances of frozen eggs actually producing babies have improved, and social media is normalising the trend.
“Knowledge [of egg survival and success] has improved significantly because ... people are telling their friends, and doctors are more comfortable offering the technology because the results are so good,” Cattrall said.
An early criticism of so-called “social egg freezing” was that because less than 40 per cent of women returned for their eggs, enormous waste was created. But it is now so mainstream that, especially in the US where some fertility clinics form partnerships with influencers, egg freezing is portrayed on social media as empowering self-care.
In 2021-22, there was a 73 per cent jump in the transfer of fresh embryos created using thawed eggs compared to 2020-21, according to the fertility treatment regulator, VARTA. In the same period, egg storage jumped 30 per cent, and at the end of the 2022 financial year, there were 88,931 eggs in storage in Victoria.
Ten years after egg freezing was deemed no longer experimental by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Melbourne IVF researchers are about to publish a paper that will show pregnancy success rates for thawed eggs are now about as good as IVF using fresh eggs.
“We’re seeing up to 95 per cent survival rate in the eggs [up from 70-75 per cent],” Cattrall said.
“For every seven eggs stored, there is a one-in-two chance of having a baby if they were frozen before the age of 35.”
But she warned that egg freezing was still not “a guaranteed insurance policy”.
This is not necessarily the message women receive when browsing TikTok or Instagram, where egg freezing is trending hard.
Some Australian researchers, such as Monash University public health researcher Dr Karin Hammarberg, say some clinic websites are not transparent enough in stating the cost, duration and odds.
“They don’t say you might need to have five stimulation cycles for an 80 per cent chance of having a baby, or mention the cost and number of cycles needed to have reasonable hopes of success,” Hammarberg said. The total price can be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
According to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, a 38 year-old with 25 frozen eggs – which would typically take at least two collection cycles, as not all retrieved eggs are of the required quality to freeze – has a 77 per cent chance of a live birth.
University of NSW epidemiology professor Georgina Chambers, who oversees the Your IVF Success website, and the Australia and New Zealand Assisted Reproduction Database, said while egg freezing was a good tool and option for some, putting childbearing off reduces the likelihood of it happening.
“The longer you delay your children, the less likely you are to have children, and to have a smaller family than the desired number of children,” Chambers said.
Women’s desire to understand fertility has grown so much that 3000 users a month visit the two year-old Your IVF website, 60 per cent of whom use its fertility “estimator”.
“We were surprised about that, it does point to people desperate to understand their chances of success – we did an evaluation, and most people over-estimate their chances of success,” Chambers said.
“I think where you’ve got to be careful is so women don’t freeze their eggs thinking, ‘Now I’m guaranteed to have a baby’. Because that can be incredibly disappointing to them.”
Cattrall advises women to consider freezing their eggs if they are around the age of 30 and intend to have children, but are not in a situation in which they can envisage this happening.
“It depends on the age of the eggs frozen and the number of eggs frozen,” she said. “But what we know now is that eggs are performing much better than they did in the past.”
Survival rates of frozen eggs have gone from 70-75 per cent to 90-95 per cent due to new technology.Credit: Getty
“I would say we’re providing a realistic possibility of having a baby later in life.”
Boyle has no doubt the procedure was the right choice. She realised what it meant to her when she was having the required counselling session.
“I remember crying at and thinking, ‘Why am I crying?’ I realised then how important this was to me,” she said.
Boyle had one cycle of hormones to stimulate her ovaries, and had 17 eggs retrieved, at total cost of about $10,000.
“Motherhood is everything [I expected] and more,” she said.
“I’m just so thankful I froze my eggs when I did – it’s just been the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
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