When you are a woman in mid-30s and have a successful career, you might want to postpone motherhood for a little longer. Luckily, egg freezing gives career women the option to delay motherhood until they are ready.
We interviewed our patient, Zahara, who recently froze her eggs at Harley Street Fertility Clinic. Zahara, who is in her mid-30s, runs an IT consultancy company with her long-term partner Sebastian, and whilst a future family is on the horizon, her focus right now is on developing their business.
Here’s Zahara’s story.
The start of her fertility journey
Zahara admits it’s not clear to her when she is going to have children, so she says, “it was very important to me to freeze my eggs so I have better choices in the coming years, if and when I do decide to have children”. Zahara knew little about egg freezing and was apprehensive about the whole process. “I was checking as much as possible on google and social media, there’s so much information out there, so making sure I understood the procedure before committing to freezing my eggs was important”.
Choosing Harley Street Fertility Clinic
Zahara searched the internet for “clinics in London,” and Harley Street was one of the clinic options. Although she got in touch with a few fertility clinics, Harley Street Fertility Clinic felt the right choice. “I didn’t want to go to a very big clinic, I felt that I would experience a better and more personal service with a small clinic.” Previous medical tests showed that Zahara had fibroids, and needed to be seen urgently, and “Harley Street Fertility Clinic’s phone call came at the right time. They were very concerned about me and offered me an appointment right away”. Zahara thinks that the phone call reassured her and convinced her Harley Street was the right clinic for her to freeze her eggs.
The procedure
Zahara had thorough fertility tests before starting egg freezing. She went through 2 cycles of egg freezing, succesfully collecting a total of 31 frozen eggs. “ Because of my fibroids, I didn’t think my cycle was going to be so successful. But we had 12 eggs collected at the first cycle, and 20 at the second, my AMH increased, and my overall health was amazing. The procedure went really well,” she says.
The first cycle took over a month to allow the hormone balance and progesterone to be optimised before egg collection, but the second cycle was quicker. “For the second cycle I took less medication, it took less than 4 weeks, so I was really, really happy.”
The staff
Zahara praises our staff, “Dr Venkat has overseen both of my cycles, with amazing advice and guidance around all my health issues, before commencing the treatment. Dr Hall supported with the procedures with equal attention and care. The embryologists were lovely, the nurses also, everyone was great.” Zahara says that she will continue to have checks-ups with the clinic and measure her AMH level in about 6 months.
A message for other women
For all women who are considering freezing their eggs, Zahara has an inspiring message: “Just go for it. It’s great to plan ahead, and freezing your eggs will give you more options if you want to focus on your career, or are just not ready for motherhood. It takes a lot of stress out of your life, and enables you to relax about your fertility and concentrate on other things in life. I certainly recommend Harley Street Fertility Clinic and the experience was really smooth – I didn’t have so much recovery or downtime as I thought, I was actually having treatment while continuing everyday life” says Zahara.
Zahara decided to share her story to help other women: “it’s so important to share these stories to encourage other women to understand about their fertility health, and to feel confident in the entire egg freezing procedure”.
If you would like to take the first steps in your egg freezing journey, contact us– we would be happy to help you.
