So if you guys have been following along with my fertility journey, it's something that I've been going on. I mean it's been going for the last couple of years. I've been speaking very openly of the years about my egg freezing purely because I'm in my mid thirties now, my fertility, as most people does around this time, starts
to deteriorate. So I did the egg freezing a few times and I haven't spoken about this yet, but last year, mid to the end of last year, so I decided that with in my situation and with my fertility and the way it was going, that I should be freezing embryos, not just eggs. I should make real babies and put them on ice because you have more of a chance of success in the future.
Britan embryo is like when you inseminate an egg from you with your partner Ben's.
Sperm, So I, well, you can do it with anyone sperm, you can do a donusperm. But I did this experience with my partner Ben, who lives in Scotland, so he came over here to do it, which was amazing, and we just decided as a couple that that's what we wanted to try and do, and then I literally thought, cool, I've made the decision. We'll make an embryo. I'll forget about it. There is no part of me that thought I would walk away from that situation with no embryos, nothing,
and that's exactly what happened. And I guess I was faced with this. I knew my fertility was not great, but not one percent of me thought I would walk away empty handed. And it was a real slap in the face. So basically, I got a few embryos. And the way it works is you get them on the spot, right walk you wake up from the anesthetic, then struck them.
They make them right there. Yeah, it's amazing embrya Well you can yeah, yeah, you can walk out when you wake up from the anesthetic, and your doctor will tell you how many she thinks you're going to have, But that's not how many you end up with, because that's how many on that day. But what happens is it takes like six days for them to grow in a little petri dish, and like, some of them won't grow all the way, some of them will make it, some
will have an normality or whatever. So I started with a couple, so I was feeling really good, and then
come day six, I only had one left. And then we did some genetic testing, and I paid extra to do the genetic testing, which was just a choice that we made, and unfortunately it came back with a really really rare abnormality that I think like twelve or thirteen kids in the world were born with it because most most of these embryos won't make it to gestation, they won't make it to a live birth, and if they do make it to a live birth, they don't last very long.
Oh Earth started devastating.
It was really devastating. So I remember getting that call in the middle of the night because I was overseas at the time, and my geneticis called me and it's like, I'm so sorry, but your one embryo hasn't developed and we won't be going further with it because it's not viable with life. At some point that that child will die,
whether it's miscarriage or early days of life. And I wasn't ready for that because firstly, I just thought, what do you mean, there's none like how But I just paid all this money and science and I did hormones for three weeks, and I've gone under for like the third under and nine and sake for a third time, and I've extracted it and I've waited for six days and I've watched it and what do you mean, there's none She's like, there's just none, Like it's sometimes that's
how it is. And I just got this real a feeling that I can't explain. And I guess that's why it's taken me so long to talk about. And I know so many women go through this ten times more than I have, Like they do so many rounds, and I just can't imagine what that feels like when that's all you want, the feeling of, like not just disappointment and shock. But I was like, oh my god, I've let my partner down. Yeah, like I all this pressure
for a family. There's two people here and he can't do anything, and it's my body that's not working quote unquote, and there's a real feeling of the weight of the pressure of failure and ruining someone else's life if they want.
Kids, their opportunity to have children.
Yeah, it's really hard.
That's such a huge responsibility that you feel as though you're taking on in that moment, because it's not I mean, you went through and had another round of testing and also of like trying to create embryos. But I just feel for any woman out there who feels as though that the sole responsibility falls onto them and that they're a failure if they can't provide this, because it's not the only reason why you're not put on this earth
is to have children. Like, there's so much value to your relationship and to your life regardless of whether you do or don't have kids. How did Benny take it? Your partner?
Was he all right, Oh, Ben's incredible. He really wants to be a dad, but he doesn't have put pressure on me at all, and he has said like he was perfect in that moment. I didn't wake him up and tell him. Actually, I remember going out to the land room and I just cried the whole night and I slept out there, and I didn't want to put that on him, so I just like, and I did all this research about the chromosobal at chromosomal abnormality that
embryo had. I just like spent the whole night looking it up because I was like, oh my god, does this mean all of our children are going to have this because I didn't have enough time to go through it with a specialist. But he was amazing. He said, I want kids, but I want you more, like it's not a choice. It's not a choice for me, Like I.
Was such a beautiful yeah response.
Yeah, he's like, I will because I get that kids are non negotiable for a lot of people, like in a relationship, there are people that just the be all and end all. But I think it's different when it's not a choice. It's different when I'm not saying I don't want them. I was just saying, look, I couldn't provide you with that at this time. But what I do want to say is I don't want this just to be a real doom and gloom. It was, and
I know for a lot of women it was. But we let a couple of months go by and then we did it again and my specialist gave me like double the hormones and it was the worst couple of weeks ever. I was all right previously, but with the extra hormones, it was really really tough, and my partner Ben flew over and because he was worried that I would get a bad result again.
And going through it alone.
So he flew over just for a couple of days to look after me, and I am very happy to report that with this extra embryo, with the extra hormones, we did get three embryos, So after like six months, we did get a couple. So we do have three that there for one day when I wanted to trust them, but I just wanted to say it only because I know so many women go through this and it's not spoken about, and this enormous pressure that's put on ourselves
by ourselves and by society. It's it shouldn't be like that, and I just want people to know that if you're going through it, you're one hundred percent not alone. You've been talking about this on this show for like the better half of the year, so you can podcast it too on iHeart.
If you on Life un Cut, your podcast, you've been speaking about it for a long time.
It's a big episode on Life Uncut that we did just last week. If you guys want to go and hear more, we'll see all tomorrow.
Goo bye, guys.