I bought a flat at 35 but should have ‘banked’ my fertility, says TV doctor
DR Zoe Williams is one of the hundreds of single women who has opted to freeze their eggs.
The 38-year-old, who starred as Amazon in the Gladiators TV series before becoming a GP, had her first appointment to begin the process earlier last month.
She is mindful that she is lucky to be able to afford to freeze her eggs, and that for many women, including some of her own patients, the expensive procedure is simply out of the question.
‘I’m in a fortunate position that I have the choice,’ she says.
‘It’s a lot of money so it comes at a sacrifice, but so many women just don’t even have that choice. We’re not talking about women who are the lowest earners, we’re taking about the majority of women who may have to resort to taking out loans to do this.’
Dr Williams, who regularly appears on ITV’s This Morning giving medical advice, says the idea of freezing her eggs was raised by her mother in 2014, when she was 34. She did not do anything because she still hoped to meet ‘Mr Right’. But given her knowledge of how fertility decreases after 35, she now wishes she had acted earlier – and would have done, had egg-freezing been free on the NHS. ‘I chose at 35 to buy a flat but I could have chosen egg-freezing instead. In hindsight that would have been the best thing,’ she says. ‘So if it had been available on the NHS, I would certainly have done it younger.’