An Actress who Froze her Eggs to enjoy Motherhood Later

The very gorgeous model and actress Diana Hayden made the country proud when she won the Miss World crown back in 1997. This beauty queen got this title at the age of 24. After that, she went on to do a few ad films and was also seen in the second season of the Famous Indian reality show Bigg Boss.

She was back in news in January 2016, when she had a baby girl. While giving birth to a baby might look like a very normal affair to all of us, but the special thing is, how Diana’s baby was born. It is a kind of medical miracle. Well, this beauty queen’s baby was born out of an egg that she had frozen eight years back. That’s right, the 42-year-old lady gave birth to a healthy baby girl through the egg that she had frozen when she was 34. She had frozen 16 of her eggs between October 2007 and March 2008, with the help of Dr. Nandita Palshetkar, an infertility specialist.

Diana took this decision before her marriage or even before she fell in love. She kept her eggs frozen in the year of 2007 and 2008 and married an American Collin Dick in the year 2013. After her marriage, she knew that she was suffering from endometriosis. This is a physical condition which might cause infertility in women. Thus, the decision of preserving her eggs proved to be a boon in these circumstances. At that time the couple decided to take a risk with her frozen eggs by using them for test tube baby.

This process is the same as in vitro fertilization process. In this process, we firstly keep the eggs in a controlled lab temperature then make them come in contact with the sperms (either with the partner or the donor) whenever required. Some amount of the eggs will fertilize and start to divide, making blastocysts (embryos) that are ready for transferring back into the woman’s body. Diana has also gone through this process. On January 9, 2016, she was blessed with a baby girl, whose name is Arya.

One of the doctors from that hospital told the media, “Normally the average weight and length of a newborn in India is 2.6 kgs and 48 cms, but Diana’s daughter weighed 3.7 kgs and was 55 cms at the time of birth.”

The gynecologist who froze Diana’s eggs was also quoted by several reports as saying, “It was a concept being adopted very rarely by working or professional women who do not want to be a mother at the age of 30 or something. But delivering a baby at 42 (years of age) is something amazing and we feel extremely excited.”

She also said, “Birth of Diana’s daughter would be a big boost to working women that egg freezing really works and could be of help to them, especially to Indian women who often juggle between their career and a ticking biological clock.”

Talking to a daily media channel, Diana Hayden says, “A career woman need not think about her biological clock and get pressured into getting married earlier than she wants to or have a baby when she isn’t ready. I froze my eggs for two reasons: I was busy with my career at that time and, more important, I was very clear that I was going to wait to fall in love and marry before having a baby.”

All thanks to the medical technology, women who do not get time until their mid-30s or even later to plan a baby, need not lose hope now. And, we cannot thank Diana enough for taking this bold step and letting us know of this miraculous technology.

Image source: CHA Fertility Center, The Better India, hindustantimes.

Nupur Kumari