Alison Frank dreams of being a mother. The only thing that's missing is a baby.
"I thought, 'I'm getting up there. I'm in my mid-30s. [I] haven't found Mr. Right,'" said Frank.
Frank decided to freeze her eggs to try and preserve her fertility. Frank injected egg-producing drugs for 12 days. Frank's eggs were then extracted by doctors and taken to a lab at Atlanta's Reproductive Biology Associates .
Scientists dehydrated Frank's eggs and plunged them into liquid nitrogen, which froze them immediately.
"People hear the biological clock ticking and they can't control the future and they don't know if they are going to meet a man they are going to be happy to marry," said Dr. Dan Shapiro, a reproductive endocrinologist at Reproductive Biology Associates.
Dr. Shapiro has been using the quick freezing technique for a couple of years, but admitted that the procedure has no guarantees.
The Atlanta doctor said that couples using donated eggs from a younger woman have a 65 percent success rate. The success rate for women freezing their own eggs depends on the age of the patient.
"A woman who is 30 who freezes her eggs is going to have better than a 50 percent chance that her frozen eggs will result in a baby. If a woman is 38 or 39 though, the chance is much lower, closer to 30, 35 percent," Dr. Shapiro said.
The back-up plan comes with a hefty price tag. The procedure costs about $7,500, but it seems more and more women are willing to pay that price.
Dr. Simone Whitmore, an obstetrician gynecologist, said that eggs taken from a younger woman may reduce the risk of fetal abnormalities. Dr. Whitmore said that having a baby later in life, especially after 35, increases the risks associated with the pregnancy.
"There's a higher risk of gestational diabetes, a higher risk of preeclampsia, toxemia, a higher risk of caesarian section. So there are several risks associated with being older," said Dr. Whitmore.
Dr. Whitmore said fertility is fleeting and advises her patients not to wait too long. "I do try to encourage my patients who are married, who are at least thinking about childbirth to go ahead and narrow down a time to have it. There's no such thing as perfect timing," Dr. Whitmore said.
Frank said, that now, time isn't a big consideration as it used to be. If the day comes when Frank is ready to use her eggs, they will be removed from a drum, thawed and fertilized. The process will cost an additional $7,500.
"I knew that going in to it, that there are no guarantees. Even in the traditional or conventional way there are no guarantees and so I feel like I had nothing to lose," said Frank.
So far, there have been no cases of health problems in the babies born from the egg freezing process at the Reproductive Biology Associates clinic, but the technology is still new and only been around a few years.
