"It'll affect your figure, your hormones, your future" Indian Women's Biggest Egg Freezing Fears, and What Doctors Actually Say

When Rhea Mathur, 31, mentioned to her mother that she was considering egg freezing, the response came fast. "She said, 'You'll put on so much weight. Your hormones will go completely out of control. And then when you actually want a baby, nothing will work.' She wasn't being cruel, she genuinely believed all of it."

Rhea's mother is not alone. Across kitchen tables, WhatsApp family groups, and even some gynaecologist waiting rooms in India, a remarkably consistent set of fears circulates around egg freezing. Alongside concerns about egg freezing cost, women often hear warnings about health risks, fertility problems, and long-term side effects. These fears are specific, deeply felt, and in most cases, not supported by medical evidence.

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Fertility specialists say these myths come up in almost every consultation and that they're costing women a genuine reproductive choice. We asked the doctors to address them one by one.

It will make you gain weight

This is perhaps the most persistent fear, and doctors say it is almost always the first one raised, particularly by mothers and mothers-in-law.

It is not entirely without basis. The egg freezing process involves hormonal stimulation, typically over 10 to 14 days, to encourage the ovaries to produce multiple eggs. One side effect of this stimulation can be temporary bloating and fluid retention.

"There is some abdominal bloating during the stimulation phase  that is real, and women should know about it," says Dr Anjali Kumar, a reproductive medicine specialist based in Delhi. "But bloating is not weight gain. It resolves within days of the retrieval. We are not talking about a lasting change."

The confusion, she explains, often comes from conflating egg freezing with long-term fertility treatments or conditions like PCOS, where hormonal imbalance can genuinely contribute to weight changes over time. A single egg freezing cycle typically 12 to 14 days of hormone injections followed by a retrieval procedure does not replicate those conditions.

"The hormone levels go up, the eggs are retrieved, and then your cycle resets. Your body returns to its baseline remarkably quickly," Dr Kumar adds.

Your hormones will go haywire permanently

In India, any medical intervention involving hormones tends to attract significant suspicion. Cultural memory of hormonal contraceptives being blamed for everything from mood changes to infertility runs deep, and egg freezing gets swept into the same anxiety.

What the stimulation process actually involves is a temporary, controlled increase in hormones, primarily FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone) to prompt the ovaries to mature multiple eggs in one cycle rather than the usual one.

"Think of it this way," says Dr Meghna Rao, a fertility specialist in Mumbai. "Every month, your body recruits a group of follicles and then lets all but one go. What we are doing in stimulation is rescuing those follicles that would have been lost anyway, and letting them all mature. We are not creating something new or overriding the system, we are working within it."

Once the cycle ends, hormone levels return to normal. Menstrual cycles typically resume within four to six weeks. There is no evidence in medical literature of egg freezing causing lasting hormonal disruption in healthy women.

"I have had patients come back to me six months later and say their periods are exactly as they were before," Dr Rao says. "Because that is what the research and clinical experience  tells us to expect."

It will make natural pregnancy harder later

The fear here is intuitive, if medically incorrect: that removing eggs from the body depletes the ovarian reserve and makes conception more difficult down the line.

In reality, the ovarian reserve of the total number of eggs a woman has is not reduced by egg freezing. Women are born with approximately one to two million eggs; by puberty this has reduced to around 300,000 to 400,000. Over a reproductive lifetime, roughly 400 to 500 eggs ovulate. A typical egg freezing retrieval yields between 10 and 20 eggs.

"The eggs we retrieve would not have been used anyway, they would have been reabsorbed by the body as part of the natural cycle," Dr Kumar explains. "Freezing them does not take anything away from your future fertility. If anything, preserving them at their current quality is the entire point."

Studies comparing natural conception rates in women who have previously undergone egg freezing with those who have not show no significant difference in outcomes.

It is only for women who can't have children naturally, it means something is wrong with you

This stigma runs particularly deep in India, where egg freezing is still widely associated with infertility treatment rather than elective fertility preservation.

In fertility clinics in the West, elective egg freezing, sometimes called social egg freezing, now accounts for a significant and growing proportion of all cycles. Women freeze their eggs not because they have been diagnosed with a condition, but because they are not yet ready for a child and want to preserve options.

In India, awareness of this distinction remains limited. Many women who enquire about egg freezing report being asked by family members whether they have "been told they can't conceive"  as though the procedure were diagnostic of a problem rather than a proactive choice.

"This association with illness is holding a lot of women back," says Dr Rao. "Egg freezing is increasingly a planning tool. It sits alongside decisions about career, relationships, finances. It does not mean anything is wrong with you, it means you are thinking ahead."

The procedure is dangerous and extremely painful

Fear of the procedure itself, injections, anaesthesia, surgical retrieval stops many women from researching further.

The process does involve daily self-administered hormone injections over roughly 10 to 14 days, followed by an egg retrieval procedure performed under mild sedation. Most women return to normal activity the same day or within 24 hours.

"Pain is relative," Dr Kumar says. "The injections are subcutaneous  under the skin, not into a vein. Most women find them manageable. The retrieval is done under sedation, so you are not aware of it. The most common experience afterwards is some cramping and tiredness, which typically resolves within a day."

The more serious complication associated with ovarian stimulation is ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), in which the ovaries overreact to the hormonal stimulation. In its severe form, it affects less than one to two per cent of cycles, and modern monitoring protocols have made it increasingly rare.

"Every patient is monitored closely through the stimulation phase,  blood tests, ultrasounds," Dr Rao explains. "If we see the ovaries responding too strongly, we adjust. The protocols exist precisely to catch this early."

Why do these myths persist and why does it matter?

Fertility specialists are clear that these fears do not come from nowhere. A generation ago, hormonal interventions in India were less well understood, less well monitored, and less openly discussed. The distrust was not irrational in that context.

What has changed is the evidence base, the technology, and the global volume of data now available on egg freezing outcomes. What has not yet caught up is the conversation  in families, in general practice clinics, in the wider culture.

"Women are making decisions based on information that is 20 years out of date," Dr Kumar says. "And because it is a topic that still carries some social sensitivity, they often do not push back on what they are told by their family. They just quietly decide it is not for them."

The decision to freeze eggs is a personal one, shaped by finances, timing, values, and medical suitability. But it should be based on accurate information. These fears  of weight gain, hormonal chaos, depleted fertility, stigma, and pain are, in most cases, not the right reasons to rule it out.

If you are considering egg freezing, speak to a fertility specialist or gynaecologist. An AMH (anti-Müllerian hormone) test can give you a baseline picture of your ovarian reserve and help you understand your options. Specialised fertility centres with dedicated egg freezing plans such as Birla Fertility & IVF, which has 50+ centers across major Indian cities, typically offer an initial consultation that includes ovarian reserve assessment, giving women a clearer, medically grounded starting point before any decision is made.