A reproductive biologist reveals why she's choosing to freeze her eggs at the age of 27. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
As I was being taken into hospital with Covid-19 in March, I put a post on my Instagram telling my friends and family what had happened. I had developed pneumonia and blockages in my right lung – a total shock considering I am 27 with no previous health problems.
When the man I was dating ended things shortly afterwards, I made a decision: this would be the year I froze my eggs. I had always thought about doing it if I hadn't met anyone by the time I was 30 but, with my love life looking forlorn and lockdown making the prospect of meeting someone new nearly impossible, now was the time to act.
I'm not alone: inquiries for egg freezing shot up by as much as 50 per cent at some clinics as lockdown put the brakes on dating, and made it harder for women to find someone to start a family with before their fertility dwindles. I can imagine there being even more interest now that anyone living in a Tier 2 or 3 area (as I do in London) is banned from spending any time indoors with anyone outside their household – it's been described as a "sex ban" on couples who don't live together, but spare a thought for singles who can't even meet someone for a drink.
Instead, we're all stuck at home thinking about what it is that we want from life, and it turns out that a lot of us want a family, including Telegraph columnist Sophia Money-Coutts who recently launched a podcast called Freezing Time about her decision to freeze her eggs at the age of 35.
My family weren't completely sure when I told them about my decision. My dad is a feminist, and has always supported my career, so thought it was a great idea to take off some of the pressure of finding the perfect man in the next few years. Mum needed a bit more persuading, as she would prefer me to get married and have babies naturally like she did. In the end she came round after I told her that egg freezing would only increase her chances of having grandchildren.
I also reminded her that 27 is not too early to be thinking about your fertility. I am training to be an embryologist myself, so I know the facts: as you age, your eggs do too, and the chances of becoming pregnant decrease. If you do get pregnant, older eggs mean an increased risk of genetic abnormalities.
Egg freezing can put a stop to this ageing process. If you do it at 27, you will have frozen eggs at their prime, which will still be top quality if you use them a decade later – meaning a much greater chance of getting pregnant and a healthy baby.
For the many women with fertility issues, it is even more important to act when you're young. I have a cyst on my right ovary which hampers its ability to produce eggs, and doctors tell me that this might make me go into menopause in my late 30s.
On top of all this was my severe experience with coronavirus. I was reading reports online about some women never getting their period back after serious cases of Covid-19; combined with the realisation that I wouldn't be settling down and having children any time soon, I thought the sooner I acted the better.
I came home from hospital at the end of March and, after a few months of recovery, I booked myself in for treatment at IVF London, where I am also training.
As soon as my last period started on September 1, I started injecting myself with hormones which get your ovaries ready for egg collection. The first round of drugs causes your body to produce more eggs in a month than is normal, and then a second set of injections triggers your ovaries to release them.
The drugs can cause your ovaries to swell – Money-Coutts said she was as bloated as Violet Beauregarde – but I didn't find it too bad. It wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't painful either.
A fortnight later, I was ready for the collection. I went to the clinic, put on a medical gown and was wheeled into the theatre where I was sedated. The doctor inserted needles into my vagina and harvested the eggs from my ovaries.
When I came round, they told me they had collected eight eggs in total, with just one coming from the ovary with a cyst. It's not an amazing haul, but it's OK. To top up the numbers, I'm planning on having another round either next year or the one after.
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I took a day off to recover and get over the sedation, and then was straight back to work without any complications. There was some discomfort, but nothing that a couple of paracetamol couldn't help.
Of course, egg freezing isn't a miracle treatment that will guarantee me children. For each egg collected, there's only a 6 per cent chance of it becoming a baby, which means it's less than 50/50 that I could have a child from the round I did.
I don't see it as my plan A for having a family; more as an insurance policy to boost my chances if I don't find the right man in time.
It's also not cheap. The NHS will only fund it if you're going through medical treatment that will affect your fertility, like chemotherapy. A typical round done privately might cost between £3000 and £4000 ($5900 to $7800), with an additional £1000 or so on top for the drugs.
You will then need to pay storage fees for your eggs every year until you use them. There's currently a 10-year limit for storing women's eggs for social reasons, after which they must either go through with fertility treatment or destroy them – the Nuffield Council on Bioethics is currently arguing this limit should be extended to give women more time and options.
I feel lucky that I even know about any of this. In school, we are taught that it's very easy to get pregnant and we must be extremely diligent to avoid it. That might be the right advice for teenagers, but is much less true by the time you're in your late 30s and are desperately trying for a child.
I'm trying to spread the word about egg freezing to my friends in their 20s. As you get older, your odds get worse – the chance of pregnancy from thawed eggs declines rapidly if they were harvested over the age of 35. Yet data from UK fertility regulator HFEA shows that the most common age at which women are freezing is 38, with many doing so into their 40s. I tell my friends to do it now if they can afford it – some are even paying on credit cards, while their eggs are top quality.
I've also started an Instagram account, @oocyteadventures, detailing my journey with egg freezing and hoping I can use it to raise awareness with younger women.
If the coronavirus situation goes on for another couple of years and I still haven't found a decent man, I'm just going to find a sperm donor and have a child by myself. I'm not willing to let my dreams of becoming a mother be scuppered by Covid-19.
- As told to Helen Chandler-Wilde