Motherhood on Ice | Al Jazeera Correspondent

Al Jazeera’s Amanda Burrell is in her 40s, childless and single. She would like to have children one day and is weighing up the available options. Among them is oocyte cryopreservation or, as it is more commonly referred to, freezing her eggs. The process, which involves collecting and then preserving a woman’s eggs with a view to thawing them for use in IVF at a later date, is growing in popularity. But it can also be expensive, painful and physically and emotionally taxing. As Amanda weighs up the pros and cons of going ahead with the procedure, she also explores the medical, social and ethical issues surrounding it. Motherhood on Ice follows Amanda as she meets other women facing the possibility of a childless future, grapples with her own feelings about it and, ultimately, decides whether or not to freeze her eggs.