Ultimate Performance London City<\/u><\/a> in May 2015. I was clear with my trainer Dominik Szweda that I wanted to get strong and healthy in preparation for beginning IVF. I gave up alcohol, improved my nutrition and started a weight-based training programme. After a year, my muscle mass was up, my weight was down by 15kg and I felt great. In 2016 – just after my 40th birthday – I discussed my plans with my family and decided to go for it.<\/p>\nPeople don\u2019t speak much about IVF, but it’s a huge emotional and physical commitment. I used donor sperm from the London Sperm Bank, and selected a tall, sporty, music-loving lawyer. He included in his profile his belief that everyone should have a child if they wished. When it came to my egg retrieval – which I had gone to alone – I only got two eggs. It felt devastating, particularly because the woman in the next cubicle got 20 and I could hear her celebrating with her partner.<\/p>\n
However, that one egg was fertilised and implanted, and a pregnancy test two weeks later revealed I was pregnant. I trained throughout this time, which went smoothly. My obstetrician advised me to have a c-section at 37 weeks, and my son was born in January 2017. I recovered well and six weeks later I was back at the gym, which I credit to having trained before and during pregnancy.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a clich\u00e9, but knowledge is power, and I\u2019d encourage other women to not only find out about their own fertility, but to ask themselves what they really want from life. If you truly want a baby, don\u2019t wait for the right man or time. Another reflection I\u2019ve had is how often I was reminded by healthcare professionals that I was 40 – I get that age is a factor in the process, but at a certain point it felt unhelpful and stigmatising. As though it was my fault for \u201cleaving it too late\u201d or being too career-focused to find a partner.<\/p>\n
I tried to add to my family with four more rounds of IVF during lockdown, when I was 44, all of which were sadly unsuccessful. The failure to give my son a sibling still hurts me. Further still, being a mum is hard work – and doing it independently is even harder – while working full time and trying to stay healthy.<\/p>\n
However, I feel super positive about giving birth in my 40s. I loved being pregnant – after years of stressing over my body not being good enough, I\u2019m now frankly in awe of it. I was financially secure and established in my career to be able to create flexible opportunities for myself, and I also had the confidence and knowledge to better advocate for myself, which I don\u2019t think I would have been able to do in my 30s.<\/p>\n
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