What you should know about freezing your eggs
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. For Sonia Mathur, 33, an IT professional from Delhi, the idea of preserving her fertility for the future seemed empowering on the surface, but the reality was anything but straightforward. “From the moment the doctor laid out the process—hormone injections, egg retrieval, the possibility that it might not even work—there was a knot in my stomach and questions milling in my mind.
What if my body didn’t respond well?" The procedure itself, described clinically as “routine," felt anything but that. “Daily hormone injections left me feeling bloated, irritable, and emotionally fragile. On the day of the retrieval, while I was sedated for the procedure, I couldn’t shake the anxiety that came with it," says Mathur.
It’s an anxiety shared by many women who embark on this complex journey that’s necessitated by changing lifestyle choices. With increasing professional aspirations, later marriages and changing attitudes towards family planning, women in urban India are viewing egg freezing as a ticket to autonomy. In 2011, Dr.
Priya Selvaraj, gynaecologist, infertility specialist and embryologist at GG Hospital in Chennai delivered India’s first frozen-egg baby to a 29-year-old woman. “When we announced this milestone, it wasn’t to follow a trend or for social recognition. The decision was rooted in a meaningful case history as my patient had an underlying medical condition." Today, with improved technology, egg freezing has become more accessible to women who want to extend their reproductive timeline, says Selvaraj.
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