In the UK eggs can usually be frozen for up to 10 years, unless there are special medical circumstances and then this can be extended.  When you go to use your eggs you can do so with a partner or using donor sperm, you can also choose to export your eggs to another country and use them there. In the UAE as far as I can decipher the law is different.  You can actually freeze your eggs here, but there are restrictions around their use.  They can be frozen for up to five years, you can only use them if you are married and you can not export them out of the country to use.

Generally speaking egg quality is better when you are younger (in your 20s or 30s) and as you get older you become less fertile and your egg quality declines.   This decline increases significantly after 35.

It is a difficult question to know when you should go ahead and freeze your eggs.  Ideally you would do it when you are at your most fertile, in your 20s, but firstly who has that kind of cash at 20!? (because the process is not cheap) and secondly who wants to openly admit in their 20s that by the time they are 40 (when they are likely to have diminishing ovarian reserve (DOR)) that they aren’t going to have met ‘Mr Right’ and already be a mother?  I know I hadn’t even heard of ‘egg freezing’ when I was 20!

So now, women like me, who have hit their late 30s or 40s, been focusing on a career and haven’t yet met Mr Right have the option to try, at this late stage, and freeze their eggs or give up their dream of becoming a biological mother. There are some companies like Apple and Facebook, who are moving in the right direction by offering to pay for female employees to freezing their eggs so as to delay motherhood a little longer.  These companies, in my view, have got it right and I wish there were more like them and that egg freezing was more accepted, not something that is talked about behind closed doors.

A single female should be proud of the fact that she is taking control of her declining fertility. Egg freezing should be openly talked about and accepted, it is an insurance policy and in my view a sensible option for a single women in their 30s who wants to one day possibly become a mother.