Freeze Your Eggs, And Live Your Life..

Freeze your eggs, and live your life? Wait, there's more...

- Rituparna Som

For most women, when it comes to matters of their bodies, the overarching thought has been led by: ‘I am independent, and I get to decide what I want to do with my body and when.’ And although a small percentage of females have this agency, biology does not support them. The reality is females are born with about one million eggs, and by the time they hit puberty, it declines to 300,000. Of these, only 300-400 are ovulated in a lifetime. Thankfully, science lends a helping hand. Of course, females can freeze their precious eggs until they decide when or if they want to have babies. The caveat is that the decision needs to be made early. Ergo Jennifer Aniston’s public regret of not having done it when she was younger (better quality eggs) mainly because not enough people were talking about it.

“I’ve always been an independent working girl, and I don’t want to decide when to get married or have babies just because I’m running out of time,” says celebrity stylist and entrepreneur Tanya Ghavri. “Whenever it happens, I want to do it for the right reasons.” Freezing one’s eggs opens up a world of possibilities for many women – and it’s not an exaggeration to say it saves a lot of them from committing to unhappy, possibly abusive, relationships to achieve the end goal of giving birth by a certain age.

Oocyte preservation isn’t exactly dinner table conversation yet, but it’s getting there. The process might not feel the same for everyone, but it is reasonably basic and doesn’t vary much from one person to the other. The hiccups in India aren’t just rooted in social stigma but prohibitive costs too. The process is expensive – it’s around a couple of lakhs, and the cost of maintaining frozen eggs or embryos can be around ₹ 10,000-20,000 a month.