Spotlight on success: Helen's questions on egg usage
Helen first froze her eggs at 35. She'd had a run of unsuccessful dating and wanted to feel like she was doing something, taking a bit of control back rather than waiting on a future she couldn't predict.
A few years later, that picture shifted. She met someone, and at 38 she conceived her first child naturally. By 41, she was thinking about a second baby, and wondering whether the eggs she'd frozen six years earlier might be part of the plan this time around.
Why she came to Egg Advisor
Helen is a UK resident with her eggs in storage in the UK, but she'd been living in the US temporarily for about a month when she started looking for advice. Before she found us, she had already spent $550 on clinic appointments in the US trying to get clarity on her options but felt none the wiser.
She came to Egg Advisor with two very specific questions:
What's the best pathway for using her eggs at 41? Given the number of eggs she had frozen, what would a sensible thawing protocol look like?
Sex selection. She would like a girl this time, and wanted to understand where in the world this is even legal, and what the wider implications might be.
What our Chief Egg Advisor talked her through
Helen spoke with Dr. Valerie Shaikly, our Chief Egg Advisor. The first thing they discussed was refreshing Helen's AMH test. Her last reading was years old, and a current AMH, alongside an antral follicle count, gives a much more accurate picture of her ovarian reserve today. That matters when deciding whether to lean entirely on the frozen eggs, or whether a fresh cycle alongside them might also be worth considering.
They then talked through thawing in batches rather than thawing every egg at once. The logic is straightforward. Thaw a batch, see how many survive, see how many fertilise, see how the embryos develop, and only come back for another batch if needed. The detail is for Helen's clinic to confirm, but it gave her a much clearer sense of the questions to bring to that conversation.
On sex selection, in the US and a small number of other countries, "family balancing" is legal, but it carries extra cost, travel logistics, and ethical questions that are worth genuinely sitting with. Dr. Shaikly laid the picture out without steering Helen towards any particular path.
In Helen's words
"Speaking to an independent egg advisor openly about my challenges and choices made me feel empowered. There was no pressure to choose a treatment, and because there were no sales involved I was simply given objective advice. I now feel like I am in the driving seat and have unbiased information on my future options and the potential for my frozen eggs. I know the right questions to ask my clinic."
Helen's story is a useful reminder that a lot of women come back to their frozen eggs in a very different life from the one they were in when they froze them. New partner. New child. New questions. The eggs don't change, but the conversation about them often does. And it's worth having that conversation with someone who isn't selling you anything.
