Tick Tock
In May 2015, shortly after my 40th birthday I decided to take control of my ticking fertility clock and give myself a little more time to meet Mr Right to savor the dream of motherhood the traditional way, I decided to freeze my eggs. I thought freezing my eggs would be a relatively simple process for someone as healthy as me….. How little did I know!
After a little online research the first thing to do was to get an AMH test done (Anti-mullerian hormone). This is a simple blood test that usually takes a few days to get the results for. AMH levels do not change significantly throughout the menstrual cycle but they do decrease with age. So the result can determine a women’s ovarian reserve. As a benchmark healthy women below 38 years old with normal follicular status on day 3 of their menstrual cycle have AMH levels of 2.0 – 6.8 ng/mL.
OVARIAN FERTILITY POTENTIAL AS MEASURED BY AMH TEST:
Optimal Fertility : 4.0 – 6.8 ng/mL
Satisfactory Fertility : 2.2 – 4.0 ng/ML
Low Fertility : 0.3 – 2.2 ng/mL
Very Low / Undetectable : < 0.3 ng/mL
High levels : > 6.8 ng/mL
So when my AMH test came back at 0.1 ng/mL ‘very low/undetectable’, I went into an immediate state of panic, distress, shock and denial trying to rationalize how my result could be so low. It couldn’t possibly be correct. Maybe it was because I had just come off the birth control pill that I had been on for 5 years. Maybe there was an error. Maybe.. maybe… maybe….
Finding Answers
I needed answers and it was clear I needed them quickly. I thought making the decision to freeze my eggs was going to be the hard part, I had never anticipated it would be too late.
I live in the UAE and becoming a single unmarried mother is not something that is accepted here, so my options were…. to leave the place I call home to try and pursue motherhood as a single parent OR find a doctor here that would help me try and freeze my eggs to buy me a little more time to do things the traditional way.
I am remaining anonymous primarily because my egg-freezing journey seems to be in rather uncharted waters because of where I live and the process I have had to follow.
Uncharted waters not because the words ‘egg freezing’ are still taboo; although sadly I do think they aren’t as accepted as they should be in our day and age; but because I live in a country were the words ‘egg’ and ‘freezing’ rarely sit in the same sentence together and most definitely don’t when that sentence also contains ‘single female’ in it, so calling ‘egg freezing’ taboo here is an understatement.
If I knew in my 20s what I know now I would have done things quite differently. My journey has been made unnecessarily harder than I think it needed to be because of ignorance, a large part of which was mine, and a lack of compassion from many healthcare professionals I have come into contact with throughout my journey. This doesn’t take away from the handful (and sadly it is only a handful) of amazing ones who have got me this far.
My Hope
I hope that in the not too distant future, through awareness and education; my experience will be the exception not the rule and ‘egg freezing’ will be an acceptable every day conversation had by single middle aged women, not one that happens behind close doors.