You never thought that you’d be thinking of freezing your eggs. You, who’ve been too busy falling in love, but life didn’t happen according to a straight line, and you’d already accepted that, or so you thought. You were just 35 when the physician spoke those words, which resonated deeply within you, “Your ovarian reserve is lower than expected for your age.” You agreed, politely, playing along, pretended you understood what she said and you were fine. But on the drive home, those words repeated in your mind. “Egg reserve lower than expected,” your body had already begun penning the end to a tale you hadn’t even started.

That night, you rolled and turned, the glow of your phone lighting the ceiling, reading through stories of women who waited too long. You read about egg freezing, the biology behind it, the success rates, the costs which made your stomach turn. You read about women who had done it at 20, about the “luckiest” who did not have to. But above all, you read about hope. You made the appointment the next morning.

In the clinic, when the nurse called out your name, you followed her into a small room lined with posters of fertility options. She explained hormonal stimulations, egg retrieval, success rates, and complications. You nodded, taking notes, you’d never refer to again. The issue was, you didn’t require more information. You required time, and this was your sole option for buying some.

The shots started a week later, an act of faith performed under the fluorescent light. You watched your body grow with hormones, your mood swung back and forth like a pendulum. You whispered little prayers into the mirror at night. You told almost no one because it was too intimate, too sacred to share.

On the egg-retrieval day, you wore the slippery hospital gown that tied up awkwardly at the back and tried to still the butterflies inside your belly. The anaesthesiologist smiled kindly, the nurse held your hand. When you woke up, your mouth felt dry, and the very first thing you asked was, “How many?” “Thirteen,” said the nurse. You smiled under the mist of anaesthesia. Thirteen! It felt like a lucky number.

That night, after you settled at home with the heating pad and a cup of tea, you got the call from the embryologist confirming that eggs were safely frozen, vitrified in sub-zero temperatures, your own personal time capsules, stored in liquid nitrogen, waiting for a future you could hardly conceptualize. You felt relief. At last, after all those months, you felt like you could breathe again.

Years went by. You were taken up with work, with trips, with the daily pleasures of your late thirties. You watched friends marry, have children, divorce, you cheered at baby showers, you sent gifts, and smiled for photos. Inside, there was still a tender ache, but you carried it lightly, like a wound that no longer hurt.

Sometimes you thought of those 13 icy eggs, tucked away in a tank somewhere in a sterile lab. Years passed, you turned 40, then 41. Then one day during the summer, you met him. He was not what you imagined he’d be – quiet, gentle, the kind of man who asks questions and listens to the responses. You told him about your past — the breakups, the fertility tests, the storage tank of frozen eggs somewhere in the city.

You thought he’d stutter or vanish, instead he took your hands and said, “Then maybe that’s how our story begins.” And it did. You went back a year later to the same clinic, your heart pounding just as forcefully as before. Thirteen eggs, still waiting for you. It was all different this time, more clinical, less isolating. There were tests and waiting rooms, anxious days and silent nights. But there was laughter, too, shared meals, whispered dreams. When the embryologist called with the news — three good embryos — you wept on your partner’s shoulder. Three chances, three tiny beginnings.

Pregnancy, when it came, was a miracle and a marathon. Each milestone was in doubt, each doctor’s appointment; a leap of faith. You measured time in heartbeats and sonograms. And then one golden afternoon in late May, you held your daughter in your arms for the first time.

Her cry was raw, urgent, the voice of life making its demand. You looked into her smooth fingers, her perfect face, and remembered the woman you had once been 10 years ago, solitary in that waiting room, fearful and determined. You wished you could go back in time and speak to her: It works, it’s worth it.

Now, as you watch your daughter stumbling across the living room floor, you can’t help but wonder what would have occurred if you hadn’t placed that call, hadn’t taken that step. You consider all the women sitting out there right now, considering the same choice, muttering the same doubts.

If you could tell them anything, you would say: Egg-freezing is not about throwing in the towel on love or motherhood, it’s about permitting yourself to dream, and about taking back your timeline, your decisions, your life. It’s not easy, it’s not guaranteed, but it is powerful.

You’d tell them about the needles, the bruises, the endless waiting, about the phone call that changed everything, the tears that finally came, the baby now sleeping softly in the next room, and you’d tell them that hope, when frozen, doesn’t fade. It simply waits, quietly, faithfully, for the moment it’s called to life.

Egg freezing, or oocyte cryopreservation, rose exponentially in the last decade. Once experimental, now a possibility for thousands of women delaying motherhood due to health-related, personal, or professional reasons. The process involves stimulating the ovaries to produce several eggs, retrieving them, and freezing them at very low temperatures using a method called vitrification.

Success rates vary according to age but are best in women under 35 years. The emotional mathematics of egg freezing is, however, more than just numbers. For some, it is not about more babies; it is about autonomy, agency, and the comforting whispers that biology does not have to dictate destiny. You never thought that you’d be the kind of person who’d have her eggs frozen, and yet, here you are, proof that quite often the best things in life begin when you find the courage to turn back the clock.