A 25-year-old TikToker went viral for freezing her eggs: What Canadians should know

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Ontario TikToker Shania Bhopa went viral for sharing her egg freezing journey at 25 — and people have mixed feelings.

Comments range from messages of congratulations for starting the process at an "an early age" to questioning her "rush" and ability to afford the procedure in the first place.

“At 25? What am I, a child mother?” one user commented.

“This is a huge marker of class,” another said.

Bhopa, a Global Health Ph.D student at McMaster University, and founder of The Canadian Courage Project, told Yahoo Canada, that she “isn’t surprised by the mixed reactions."

She says she doesn’t blame people for not knowing that “I’m actually at a prime age” and that “in Ontario, many insurance plans will cover both the procedure and the medications.”

Some commenters shared stories of using insurance to cover their own egg freezing procedures. Others said that fertility planning gave them “the freedom to build their own future” and described Bhopa’s decision as “the best thing you can do for your future self.”

While "harvesting" a healthy egg was one of the reasons Bhopa decided to freeze her eggs, she says the biggest factor was her desire to have an undisrupted career.

“I’m so driven to treat my career like a baby that I’m raising and that I love,” she says. “I know that having kids in the next 10 years will delay my progress towards the goals I have and I’m just not willing to sacrifice that.”

Looking for more information egg freezing in Canada? We spoke to an expert.

When is the ideal age to freeze your eggs?

Statistics Canada reports that every year more women are delaying having kids. In 2016, more babies were born to Canadian women over 35 than to women in their early 20s.

In 2021, the average age of mothers at the time of delivery was 31 years old — an age that has been steadily rising since the 1960s.

Dr. Meivys Garcia, Bhopa’s doctor from Markham Fertility Centre, tells Yahoo Canada that “the ideal time for women to freeze their eggs is between the age of 22 and 35.”

“In the early 20s to early 30s — under 35 — there is no big difference. But, early 30s to late 30s and early 40s, there is a tremendous difference,” she adds. “This is because a woman’s fertility begins to decline in her early 30s and the quality and quantity of eggs decreases as she gets older.”

So why are women waiting to have kids if fertility starts to decline after 30 — and dramatically declines after 35?

According to Statistics Canada the delay is partly due to more women seeking higher education, improved methods of birth control and prioritizing their careers.

“We all have the same biological clock. We know that our egg reserves are best in 20s," Bhopa says. "I hate that pressure of having to consider having kids at an earlier age, even though I know I’m not ready."

“My intention wasn’t to promote egg freezing, but was to open up dialogue on fertility planning,” she adds. “Why can’t we start thinking about fertility earlier and open up the conversation so that you can plan and be open-minded to other ways of conceiving?”

Bhopa says there’s an image projected — one she researched in her undergraduate studies — that influences how women think major life events, like having kids, should happen.

“The Disney effect around women is that we’re going to live this serendipitous life and hopefully at the snap of our fingers get pregnant when we want to, when we’re ready, when it’s ‘meant to happen,'" she says. "And that you’re going to have this perfectly natural birth."

“But, then we hit 35 and the truth is women face a lot of challenges with fertility," she continues. "And also with childbirth.”

How does egg freezing work?

According to the Pacific Centre for Reproductive Medicine, “in order to freeze eggs, a woman must undergo a very similar process to an IVF cycle.”

Injections of gonadotropin hormones are done for 10-13 days to stimulate egg growth and then the eggs are removed from the ovaries and checked for maturity before freezing.

Garcia explains that “the eggs are frozen using a process called vitrification, which involves rapidly cooling the eggs.”

After they’re frozen, the eggs are stored at a secure location, usually the fertility clinic where you have the procedure.

“Eggs can remain frozen for as long as needed,” Garcia says. “Once the patient is ready to use the eggs, they are thawed and fertilized with sperm to create embryos, which can be frozen again or transferred into a uterus to achieve pregnancy.”

According to CCRM Fertility, some women experience discomfort during the ovarian stimulation stage, but the egg retrieval process is done under light sedation and isn’t painful.

Bhopa says the process for her so far feels a lot like period cramps, but more central to the left and right sides of the lower abdomen where the ovaries are.

“You feel almost like your ovaries turned from limes to oranges,” she notes.

How much does egg freezing cost in Canada?

Garcia says the typical cost in Canada is “between $8,000 and $12,000 for an egg freezing cycle," she says.

"Additional costs include the medication used to stimulate the ovaries and yearly storage fees, which average about $300 a year," she adds, noting that to combat high costs, “some employers are adding egg freezing benefits to their package as a way to attract and retain valuable employees."

Bhopa’s insurance plan covered 80 per cent of her medication costs, which would have been about $4,000 out of pocket. The procedure itself cost her $9,000, including 5 years of prepaid storage fees.

She also notes that many employers and “insurance plans that are a notch up” from hers will also cover a percentage of the procedure.

“The feasibility aspect was a huge player in deciding this,” she says. “If I didn’t have 80 per cent of my medication covered, I would not have been able to do this, at this time, at this age.”

She sees the cost as an investment in her future earning potential, since her decision to freeze her eggs gives her the freedom to focus on her career — without having to give up the potential to have her own kids one day.

“The biggest thing I want to emphasize...is that in the South Asian community, in the ethnic minority community, there is so much pressure around getting married and having children right after you graduate,” she shares.

“That adds so much pressure to women. You feel like you can’t change the narrative, because you’ve been raised your entire life to feel like you’re on this timeline. But, you absolutely can change the narrative. You can write your own story," she continues.

"You might let some people down in your family or your community, but if you’re doing it to empower yourself — why not?”

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