Egg freezing gives Oxford woman 'sense of control'

Kohinoor Sahota said freezing her eggs has given her a "sense of control"

A woman who had her eggs frozen wants to "remove the shame" surrounding it among the Asian community.

Kohinoor Sahota said she made the decision after being made redundant and becoming single during the pandemic.

"I felt like I wasn't just mourning the loss of a partner but the loss of a potential family", she said.

"There's this kind of shame about [fertility], which is actually ironic because India is the land of the Karma Sutra."

The 37-year-old, from Oxford, said freezing her eggs had given her a "sense of control", adding: "I am just keen to remove that shame."

A woman's chances of conceiving naturally decline with age because the quality and number of eggs drop.

Egg freezing is a method of preserving fertility in order to have children at a later date using eggs of the highest quality.

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The fastest growing fertility treatments in the UK are egg and embryo freezing, according to the latest figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).

Egg freezing and storage rose 64% from 2,576 cycles in 2019 to 4,215 in 2021, while embryo storage also rose.

Ms Sahota told the BBC: "I had only seen it through celebrities and what I always saw was just white, wealthy women doing it.

"It was very rare that I would see diverse women doing it or working class women doing this and so I felt like it was something that wasn't necessarily for people like me."

According to UK fertility regulator, the average cost of having your eggs collected and frozen is £3,350, with medication being an added £500-£1,500. Storage costs are extra and tend to be between £125 and £350 a year.

Thawing eggs and transferring them to the womb also costs an average of £2,500. So, the whole process for egg freezing and thawing costs an average of £7,000-£8,000.

Ms Sahota said it took her a long time to feel comfortable "spending that much money".

"I knew that I would regret it in the future that I didn't at least give it a go," she said.

'Taboo'

Tim Child is the medical director at TFP Oxford Fertility Clinic, where Ms Sahota had her treatment, and said the clinic was seeing increasing numbers of women asking to freeze their eggs.

"Fifteen to 20 years ago, egg freezing was done for women who perhaps were having treatment for cancer - if there was a cancer treatment that was going to make them infertile and affect their ovaries," he said.

"We are seeing more people coming forward now looking to freeze their eggs purely because they're not ready right now to have a child."

Mr Child said it was less "taboo" than it was a few years ago and the technology for egg freezing had continued to improve year-on-year.

He said: "We use a technology called vitrification, when the eggs are snap frozen and the survival rate of these mature eggs is well over 90% so certainly a frozen egg that survives freezing then thawing is as good as a fresh egg."

In most cases, fertility testing on the NHS is only available to those at high risk of infertility, including those receiving cancer treatment.

The Department of Health and Social Care said the decision to freeze eggs is a "significant" one and pointed to the "clear and impartial information" for women provided by HFEA.

In a statement, it added: "Following a public consultation, HFEA published recommendations for changes to the law. We are considering these recommendations and will respond in due course."

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) said there are at-home tests that can be used to predict the likely response to ovarian stimulation in IVF treatment.

But it added: "However, it is not recommended to check ovarian reserve in people who do not have fertility problems, and freezing eggs for social reasons is not considered a fertility problem, and so is not covered by NICE guidelines."