Shifra Bendet had clear reasons for wanting to have some of her eggs collected and stored at the age of 31. “I knew I wanted children, and I didn’t want to make a decision in terms of a relationship based on that pressure,” she says. Shifra Bendet froze 21 eggs when she was 31 and still has motherhood in her plans.
Credit: Shifra Bendet “If I was going to be in a relationship with someone and make the decision to have children, I wanted it to be that they were really the right person for me, rather than because I want to have kids.” Bendet, a lawyer, was able to preserve 21 eggs. Now 38 and in a relationship, she still intends to have children and may use the stored eggs to do so, believing they may be of higher quality.
But she does not recall much discussion during the collection process of the decision she would need to make when the legal expiry date on those eggs’ storage – 10 years in her home state of Victoria (15 in New South Wales) – ticks over. “I remember them telling me there were three options available; discard them, use them or if I died, give my partner consent to use them,” Bendet says. “At the time of egg extraction they provided a lot of support and offered counselling, but aside from paying for the storage fee twice a year, I haven’t really heard from [the clinic] at all.
” As the popularity of egg freezing continues to boom , the volume of frozen eggs around the country is estimated by fertility researchers to exceed 100,000. Dema.
