News coverage for Global-Indian section of India.com
Former Miss World Diana Hayden recently welcomed a beautiful daughter, Arya Renée Hayden—but unlike most celebrity babies, it wasn’t the child’s name that put her in the headlines, but rather how she was conceived.
The newest addition to the Hayden family is the result of egg freezing, also known as oocyte cryopreservation—a procedure that allows women to beat their biological clock and postpone motherhood.
According to a 2015 report from Ernst and Young, infertility is on the rise in India, in part due to environmental factors, increasing marital age, number of women in the workforce, use of contraceptives, and clinical concerns like polycystic ovarian syndrome or STIs.
A woman is born with a finite number of eggs and after the age of 35, the quality and quantity of the remaining eggs rapidly deteriorates. Egg freezing is a procedure that has recently become more widely practiced, in which a woman’s eggs are removed and frozen. Hayden, for example, opted to freeze her eggs at age 34.
“I’m a practical person. I’m also a diehard romantic. The dichotomy here is evident,” Hayden told the Hindustan Times. “So, when I hit my thirties and hadn’t found the right person to settle down with, I decided to opt for egg freezing. I did it to protect myself. I knew that someday I would want children.”
Ishani Nath 