I froze my eggs after my divorce to protect my fertility future

Newly single at 30, Nicola pivoted from having IVF with her now ex-husband to freezing her eggs as a way of protecting her future fertility.  

Nicola's story 

After being diagnosed with both PCOS and endometriosis in her early 20s, Nicola, now 36, grew more concerned over her ability to conceive naturally the older she became.  

But her job as Cabin Crew for Jet2 – a career that has taken her all over the world – comes with demands that have meant trying for a baby wasn’t always achievable. 

“I was diagnosed with PCOS when I was quite young, about 23. The endometriosis diagnosis came a few years after that. I was struggling to walk and had continuous back pain because of it, to the point I was hospitalised a few times,” Nicola explains.  

“I was dismissed a lot in the beginning – it’s difficult to receive a diagnosis for endometriosis unless you’ve had a laparoscopy, but they were always hesitant about sending me for one.” 

Like many women in Nicola’s position, she continued to push for a referral for a laparoscopy. Eventually, she was sent for one at her local hospital and scar tissue was found and removed from her ovaries. Since then, Nicola has had two more operations, at a rate of one every three years, to remove new tissue that has grown.  

“It could be years until I meet someone else.” 

In 2022, Nicola and her then-husband of almost ten years were at the start of their IVF journey. But in a sad twist of fate, shortly before their treatment began, Nicola’s husband changed his mind about the relationship and continuing treatment and the couple divorced soon after. 

“I didn’t really know where to go from there. I was thinking ‘I’ve got endometriosis and polycystic ovaries, I’ve not got a partner and by the time I meet someone it could be a few years down the line before we’re ready for the commitment of a child’. It was overly concerning for me,” says Nicola.  

With the knowledge that fertility treatment would be her best course of action for achieving a pregnancy, and that her chances of success would only decline as she aged, Nicola chose to freeze her eggs in 2023 to allow herself time to decide what she wanted from her future.  

“At the time, I didn’t know an awful lot about egg freezing and even then it felt like a taboo subject. A lot of my friends thought it was a good idea given the circumstances, but if you were to speak to older folk, they would say I should wait until I’d met someone, but it’s not as easy as that anymore,” shares Nicola.  

“I had to decide whether to freeze eggs or embryos.”  

TFP GCRM Fertility was already known to Nicola thanks to three friends that had previously undergone IVF at the clinic. And after doing some research into the clinic herself, she felt reassured it was the right clinic for her.  

“I looked at the success rates on the website and read some of the reviews and everything was really positive. I felt like I’d be in good hands there and the clinic is really close to me which was an added benefit when travelling in for appointments and scans.” 

In August  2023, Nicola attended her first appointment at TFP GCRM Fertility for her fertility assessments. The antral follicle count (AFC) scan, an internal ultrasound, confirmed her PCOS diagnosis and her consultant agreed that egg freezing would be her best option.  

At that point, Nicola had to decide whether she wanted to freeze eggs or embryos created with the help of a sperm donor.  

“That was quite scary for me to be honest,” says Nicola. “I was told that embryos have a slightly better chance of surviving the thawing process than eggs but at the time it felt like a big step. 

“I worried about going through the full cycle with a donor and then meeting someone before I was ready to use them and being back at square one.” 

Ultimately, Nicola decided that in order to keep her options open for the future freezing her eggs was the right choice for her. However, she hasn’t completely ruled out the possibility of pursuing solo parenthood with the help of a sperm donor. 

“I keep questioning myself as to whether I just go ahead and do it or wait to see if I meet someone. I’ve given myself the cut off of 37 but that’s fast approaching,” she explains.  

"It was an investment for me.” 

A few weeks after her initial assessments, Nicola was ready to start her egg freezing journey. Due to the physical demands of her job, she chose to take the length of her treatment off of work, allowing her body the time it needed to rest.  

“I’d been speaking with one of my Captains who had gone through treatment with her partner and she advised not to fly during that time as my body wouldn’t have been fully rested,” says Nicola.  

“We have an IVF policy at my place of work so it was fairly easy for me to do that. But I thought it was such an investment for me that I wanted to give myself the best possible chance.”  

As a regular blood donor, Nicola admits that injecting herself with the hormone medication needed to stimulate her egg growth wasn’t a problem for her. But as a person living with PCOS, Nicola has more follicles within her ovaries than those without the condition, which meant she experienced more severe bloating and sensitivity as the follicles grew.  

“I think I had about 20 follicles, whereas the average person would have between 8 and 15. I looked like I was pregnant, and it became quite painful to walk,” she says.  

“But I think it was the emotional side of things that took me by surprise. I was on the sofa watching television one night and before I knew it, I’d burst into tears. Obviously, you’re pumping yourself full of hormones so it’s understandable, but I don’t think I’d prepared myself for that.” 

“I feel like I’m now eager to use them.”  

Nicola’s doctors at TFP GCRM Fertility were hopeful that she’d have a high number of mature eggs ready to be collected based on the follicles they could see during her monitoring scans. During her egg retrieval procedure, 11 eggs were collected from her ovaries and six were mature enough for freezing.  

“I think I felt a bit disappointed at that as we’d expected there to be more. But six is still six and they’re technically younger than I am now so I’m trying to be positive about that.” 

With six healthy eggs now frozen, Nicola feels both reassured about the options now available to her, as well as apprehensive about what comes next.  

“I keep having a debate with myself. I feel like I am eager to use them but I don’t want to just jump in and do it by myself,” she explains.  

“I know that when I do meet someone there will be a conversation around me having eggs frozen and I don’t want that to appear as coming on too strong. But I also have to be unapologetic about what I want and I can’t go through another relationship only to find out they don’t want kids at the end of it.”  

Since freezing her eggs, Nicola has had several of her colleagues ask her for advice on egg freezing.  

“Unfortunately, in the aviation industry you spend a lot of time away from home so often people go through long periods of being single which, for females, means exploring other options. 

“I shared my journey on TikTok so that people could feel reassured that egg freezing is an option and that it can give you the peace of mind you might desperately need for the future.”