To be fertile or infertile is a question that burdens many women everywhere. The journey on preserving a woman’s fertility is no easy feat. It requires energy (both physically and mentally) and there is no guarantee that the process of being fertile ( whether one needs to go through fertility treatments or have their eggs frozen and preserved for the future) will go smoothly etc. There is a lot of sadness, happiness and disappointments depending on the outcomes and the results of fertility.

As a woman gets older, fertility chances become less and less, and considering women are now getting more busy, focusing on their careers and delaying having children longer and longer, these fertility options are the ‘to go to’ for older women.

So imagine coming from an Asian background, where traditional values dictate that Asian women need to be married and have children. When an Asian woman faces fertility issues they almost feel blamed by the older generations, who at the best of time lack sensitivities when approaching the topic of childbirth. So many just suffer in silence, and if they opt for any IVF options, they do not share the experience publicly. This is why when comedian Diana Nguyen shared the high and lows of having her eggs frozen, this was something brave and hopefully encourage more Asian woman to not see fertility issues as a fault of themselves and feel shame.

Nguyen has shared her journey over social media and she has not kept secret that she has always wanted children. After an amicable relationship break-up, and a trip to Madrid – where she walked along the Camino de Santiago – a 1,000-year-old pilgrim walk – in 40C heat- she made the decision to freeze her eggs. She wrote about her journey to freezing eggs in a recent Guardian article.

“I arrived back in Melbourne in September and was referred to a doctor recommended by a friend who had gone through 11 cycles of IVF. I was now chatting to many women in their 30s about the egg-freezing process, the hormones and how relieved everyone was to freeze them. I also heard stories of women’s grief from those who wanted to have families or extend their families and could not”.

After her GP made a fertility doctor referral and she had all her checks done, she was told she had Endometriosis. To get over this hump required her to self inject her self with hormones. That was a mental and physical barrier she had to overcome.

All in all she was able to have her eggs frozen, but the bravery she shows with sharing her story and being open about it, will contribute in removing the shame that many women and in this case Asian women face.

To read the full article, please click here or go to: https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2023/dec/04/from-hormone-injections-at-a-k-pop-concert-to-a-spread-of-endo-freezing-my-eggs-has-been-a-journey