If the girl and her future partner choose to use the eggs, the woman will become the first in the world to give birth to her own biological half-sister or brother.

Flavie Boivin was born with a genetic disorder called Turner syndrome which affects one in 2,500 female births. Women with the condition have very few eggs from birth and reach the menopause extremely early, so are often infertile by the time they may want to have children.

Melanie Boivin, a 35-year-old lawyer from Montreal, decided to donate some of her own eggs to her daughter because of lengthy waiting lists for donor eggs which she believed would only be worse when Flavie is older.

Mrs Boivin, who has two other children, an 11-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter who does not have Turner syndrome, approached fertility doctors at McGill University in Montreal to ask if they would consider storing her eggs. "For a complete year I was thinking about it and did some research on the internet and was discussing it with my partner because we were concerned about the ethical questions. Would I look at the child as my grandchild or as my own? We were also concerned about the financial impact, the physical impact on me and the emotional impact on the family. After a year I was convinced there were more advantages than disadvantages," said Mrs Boivin.

"What made us sure was the fact that I was there to help my daughter. The role of a mother is essentially to help her children and if I could do anything in my power to help her I had to do it and because of my age I had to do it now. I told myself if she had needed another organ like a kidney I would volunteer without any hesitation and it is the same kind of thought process for this," she added.

Fertility specialists at the university referred the case to an ethics committee, which approved the procedure.

If Flavie wishes to use the eggs, she will need to seek approval from another ethics committee before her treatment can go ahead. Because Turner syndrome is a genetic condition which can be passed from parent to child, it is likely that any embryos produced from her mother's eggs would be tested for the condition using a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.

Seang Lin Tan, who treated Mrs Boivin, said that whilst women with Turner syndrome are often unable to produce their own eggs, their wombs are usually completely healthy, and many women with the condition have given birth to embryos made from donated eggs. He gave details of the case at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lyon yesterday.

"It's up to the daughter and her future partner to decide whether to use the eggs or not. She doesn't have to, and they may decide to donate the eggs to another couple and then have somebody else give eggs to them," Professor Tan said. In Britain, fertility law prohibits frozen eggs from being stored for longer than 10 years.

Mrs Boivin added: "I do not want to oblige her to use the eggs, I want to give her the option. I was trying to open another door for her. It is very difficult to imagine how I will react when the situation [of Flavie having a child using her eggs] arises. She will need to make the decision and if she wants to go further I will be supportive and will see this child as any other grandchild."