I froze my eggs in my mom’s hometown in India. After her death, it took on a new meaning.

I felt it most strongly as I drifted off into my anesthesia-fueled sleep at Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai ― where my future frozen eggs were about to be stored.

My mom had been by my side every step of the way during my first round of the egg freezing process in India. But she passed away last year after battling reproductive cancer for almost two years. When I went back for a second round earlier this year, her absence was viscerally noticeable. 

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However, returning to her homeland after her death to freeze my eggs also felt deeply symbolic. 

My fertility journey started around 6 years ago: COVID-19 lockdowns and long distance had ended a relationship and, as someone in my early 30s, I was starting to think about my future plans for children. I had recently started amaternal health organization in Kenya supporting new mothers. As an early-stage entrepreneur, who was surrounded by stories of struggling working moms, I knew that I would not be ready for motherhood for several years. 

I would have been open to adopting, but after some research, I learned that this came with a lot of costs and complexities, especially adopting internationally and as a single parent. So, while the world felt frozen in time during the global pandemic, my plan to freeze my eggs also started to take shape.

I had been keeping tabs on my hormones through routine fertility tests, and I was surprised to learn that my Anti‑Müllerian Hormone (AMH) levels had dropped significantly since my previous readings. AMH is a hormone produced by the ovaries and an indicator of ovarian reserve, or egg quantity. It tends to decline over time, but there is also early research indicating a correlation between increased stress and lower AMH. Starting a new business while going through a breakup during a quarantine was certainly stressful enough. 

No matter how level-headed I thought I was about my fertility, the news didn’t land easily. While it is factually and biologically untrue, we often internalize the idea that our fertility levels are a marker of our womanhood or our ability to mother. In my case, the decline actually just meant it was the right time to freeze my eggs. 

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Since my mom was born and still had family in Mumbai, she had the great idea of looking for a fertility clinic there. India is known for its great health services, and medical tourism for elective procedures is common. As a self-employed entrepreneur, I would have to pay for this procedure out-of-pocket, so I opted to freeze my eggs in Mumbai for a third of what it would cost in North America. 

The process was more all-consuming than I expected, with constant check-ups and a surprisingly complicated injection routine, but my mom supported me through it all. She was there for every appointment, for every test, to pick up every prescription. Her presence was a balm throughout all the emotional ups and downs. 

After completing the process, I ended up with a decent output of oocytes for my AMH levels and age ― and I knew they would be stored safely just minutes away from my family’s home in Bandra.

Though I felt a sense of relief from my biological timeline after freezing my eggs, I also recognized that this was not a true ‘insurance policy,’ despite often being marketed as such. Although egg freezing can increase the chances of eventually having a biological child, it is never a guarantee. It will ultimately depend on the quality of the eggs that were frozen, how many survive the warming process, whether they successfully fertilize and develop into healthy embryos, and my health and circumstances when I eventually decide to try to conceive.

For these reasons, and recognizing that a larger bank of frozen eggs can increase the chances of ultimately having enough viable embryos, I decided to undergo one more round of egg freezing in India earlier this year.

When I stepped inside the same clinic we had visited together years ago, her absence was a palpable ache. Throughout my first egg freezing procedure, my mom had been my nurse, translator and rickshaw wrangler. This time, I numbly fumbled from doctor’s appointments to scans to prescription pick-ups with just Google Maps and my broken Hindi. Every day came with mixed emotions of nostalgia, guilt and loneliness. 

But perhaps she was somehow watching over me through this second procedure, because my AMH levels were actually higher than they had been five years earlier, to both mine and the doctor’s surprise. I ended up with another decent retrieval, giving me some reassurance that I may be able to have a child, or even two, with both cycles combined.

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Egg freezing is a very immersive and emotional experience. I feel lucky to have had a great support network: First, my mom, and then her family ― along with the fond memories of her ― in her hometown. Though she was not with me physically during my second egg freezing procedure, I felt a strong sense of her spirit through my actions and decisions. 

Now that my mom has passed away, it feels more important than ever to have my own biological children. It has not been an easy year since her passing, but I am grateful for the privilege to make reproductive decisions based on my own timeline, to increase my chances of becoming a mother one day and to hopefully carry my mother’s lineage forward. 

I recently learned that while we are developing in our mothers’ wombs as fetuses, our egg cells are already forming inside us. We are born with all the eggs we will ever have. There was something poetic about imagining the nesting dolls of my matrilineal ancestry in this way, knowing that my future potential children’s earliest cells had once been carried by both my mother and me.

Though it breaks my heart to know that she will never meet her grandchildren in person, I hope that I might somedaydiscover some of her in them.

Sahar Jamal is a Public Voices Fellow Tackling Poverty, a partnership of Acumen and The OpEd Project. She is also the Founder & CEO of Maziwa Breastfeeding in Kenya, and an ICF-Certified Growth Coach who supports and invests in female leaders and entrepreneurs. Her recent TEDxNairobi Talk highlights how society thrives when we elevate the Alchemy of Motherhood.

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