‘IT GAVE ME MY MIRACLE BABY’
Alannah Roberts, 31, from Stourbridge, froze her eggs while battling cancer at the age of 17. Then in 2016, she and her husband Andrew, 32, made history when they used the world's oldest frozen egg to have daughter Faith.
Alannah says, “I was just a normal teenager and hadn’t even thought about starting a family. But before I had chemotherapy for lymphoma, my older sister encouraged me to freeze my eggs so I could still have a baby in the future. I tried not to think about it too much, but when the cancer came back five years later, Andrew and I had to think seriously about our future. This time around, I had to have radiotherapy and a transplant, as well as chemotherapy – and the extra treatment would kill off any chance of me having a baby naturally. So now all my hopes of being a mum were firmly pinned on the seven eggs I had in the freezer.”
Alannah went into remission in 2012 and was determined to live a normal life. So in 2015, she and Andrew got married. And at the beginning of 2016, they started trying for a baby.
She says, “Doctors sat us down and told us that success rates were quite low. But I was determined. My 13-year-old eggs were taken out of deep freeze, defrosted and fertilised. But only two of them had survived long enough to be implanted.”
Alannah suffered a miscarriage with one of the embryos after just a few weeks, leaving her just one final chance to become a mother. She says, “It was horrific but I just prayed that the other baby would be OK.”
Thankfully, Faith was delivered safely in October 2016. She says, “It felt surreal to hold Faith in my arms. She was perfect. Egg freezing doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to have a baby, but it may give you the best possible chance and it gave me my miracle baby. It could change your life.”