Mumbai: Former Miss World Diana Hayden delivered a baby girl in a city hospital on Saturday as a bit of medical marvel was at work. The child was born out of an egg that 42-year-old Hayden had frozen eight years ago, reports Time of India.

Arya Hayden’s birth proves that egg freezing, deemed technically difficult until a decade ago, works and could liberate Indian women from their great worry: the ticking biological clock.

‘A career woman need not think about her biological clock and get pressurized into getting married earlier than she wants to or have a baby when she isn’t ready,’ said Hayden from her hospital suite in Surya Mother and Child Hospital in Santa Cruz.

The Times of India report says, Hayden was 32 when she read about egg freezing for the first time in 2005. Between October 2007 and March 2008, she froze 16 eggs with infertility specialist Dr Nandita Palshetkar. ‘I froze my eggs for two reasons: I was busy with my career at that time and, more important, I was very clear that I was going to wait to fall in love and marry before having a baby.’

Freezing her eggs proved to be a godsend for the model-actor for another reason. Hayden, who was 40 when she fell in love and married American Collin Dick two years ago, found out that she had endometriosis. ‘Endometriosis is a painful condition in which the endometrium or the inner lining of the uterus starts growing outside as well. Women with endometriosis may not always produce good quality eggs,’ said Palshetkar. That is when the couple decided to thaw Diana’s frozen eggs and attempt a test-tube baby.

‘Hayden’s daughter weighed 3.7kg and was 55cm long. The average weight and length in India are 2.6kg and 48cm,’ said paediatrician Dr Bhupendra Avasthi of Surya Hospital.

The infertility specialist team of Palshetkar and Dr Hrishikesh Pai believes Hayden could be a poster girl for egg freezing. ‘Egg freezing for medical reasons is done frequently, but I would say that Diana is among the first to use it for lifestyle reasons,’ said Pai. Incidentally, this isn’t the first time that the former Femina Miss India who was crowned Miss World in 1997 has been a health ambassador. When her grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer, she took up the cause of spreading awareness about the disease.