Freezing sperm, cancer and IVF treatment
Through freezing sperm, IVF and sperm banking, Jacob and Eleanor were able to have a baby boy eleven years after Jacob was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma. Eleanor tells the story of how they conceived a baby despite the complications caused by Jacob’s diagnosis.
Following the General Election and change of government, one of our key asks for the new UK Government is to ensure appropriate treatment to preserve their fertility. The government must commit to further research to understand why some young people face challenges preserving their fertility.
Meeting Jacob and initial diagnosis
Aged 17, I started a relationship with the boy I had met in my school’s sixth form college. Little did I know that, just four months later, he would be diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma in his femur.
I knew from early on that Jacob was the person I wanted to spend my life with, and his cancer diagnosis did not stop these feelings. I never thought for a moment that it would be the end of our relationship. We both took the year off from our A-Level studies while Jacob received chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery to treat the cancer and returned to our studies a year later. Jacob had long stints in hospital due to infections, as well as needing to stay in for a week each month for his chemotherapy treatment.
Freezing sperm and IVF treatment
In November 2022, we decided that we were ready to start trying for a baby. Unfortunately, due to the treatment Jacob had received for his cancer, he is completely infertile. Thankfully, before starting his treatment in 2013, he was able to freeze and store his sperm and we were aware from the age of 17 that we would likely need to have IVF to have a baby. IFV (in vitro fertilisation) is a technique to help people who are having difficulty in having a baby, where an egg is fertilised by sperm in a laboratory.
When we applied to start IVF through our GP, we were dismayed to find that the waiting list for the initial appointment was well over a year. However, we found out that we could pay for the initial consultation and then have the rest of the treatment funded by the NHS, so we were able to skip the queue and start IVF treatment in April 2023.
I was excited to start the IVF process but very nervous as well. I had no idea if it would work and how much of the limited sperm we had stored would be used. The most nerve-wracking part was starting the injections.
I had never injected myself before and the first time I did it, it took a few minutes to try and build up the confidence to actually put the needle into my skin. Once I had started I got into the rhythm of it though. Most of the injections were relatively painless but one of the drugs had a stinging sensation as it went into my body. The drugs themselves made me feel very tired and nauseous, which meant that when I did get pregnant it felt like the tiredness and nausea of the first trimester had already been going on for over a month. One of the hardest things about the injections was that they needed to be done at the same time each day. This meant that, on one occasion, I had to leave a concert early to inject myself in a car park!
During the two weeks I was injecting myself, I also had regular check-ups at the fertility clinic to see how well my follicles were responding to the treatment. Follicles are small, fluid-filled sacs within the ovaries which produce eggs.
Egg fertilisation and surgery
After a course of drugs and hormones – to determine how many eggs I was producing, prepare them for collection and help them mature – the eggs were collected during a small surgery, where a needle was placed through the vaginal wall into the ovary. I was nervous going into the surgery as I wanted a good number of eggs to be collected so that we had the best chances of creating an embryo. The surgery itself was under sedation and local anaesthetic so was relatively painless.
Eight eggs were collected and immediately fertilised with sperm selected from a vial of Jacob’s stored sperm, which had been defrosted. Of these, six were successfully fertilised.
Once the eggs were fertilised, they were placed into incubators in the lab and we then had to wait five days to see whether they would develop. It was a stressful time as we had no control over what was happening to the fertilised eggs in the lab. On day five, we were told that three of our fertilised eggs had formed embryos, one of which would be transferred into me and the other two of which would be frozen.
The embryo transfer was a simple process, similar to a smear test, where a speculum was placed into the vagina and a thin catheter was passed through to transfer the embryo into the uterus. Before the embryo was transferred, the lab technicians looked at it with a microscope to make sure that it was safely sucked into the catheter. This was the most magical experience as we saw the single cell that could one day become our baby! Although having to have fertility treatment is a much more emotionally and physically difficult process than natural reproduction, this is something which makes it so, so special. How many people can say that they have seen the single cell that would one day form their fully functional human baby?
Pregnancy after first IVF cycle
Once the embryo had been implanted, we had to wait two weeks to find out whether it had successfully implanted. The wait was absolutely awful. I was second guessing every single symptom and was so stressed out and nervous wondering if it had worked. The thing that made me really wonder if it had worked was when I was walking past the fruit bowl and could smell a peach which had gone off. On the morning of the 5th June, I took a home pregnancy test and could not believe that it was positive! It was, without a doubt, one of the happiest days of my life!
We were lucky that our treatment worked first time and I fell pregnant straight away. The chances of falling pregnant during the first cycle of IVF are very slim and we’re so grateful that it happened for us. On 13th February 2024, our baby boy, Jonah, was born. We fell immediately in love with him and we’re still completely smitten. For us, the fact that he was born via IVF makes him so special and we still cannot quite believe that we were able to have a baby when Jacob is completely infertile. We were always prepared for the possibility that fertility treatments may not work for us and we are so grateful that they did and that we have our beautiful baby boy to show for it.
Advice to others on fertility treatment
For anyone about to start treatment, I would highly recommend looking into fertility preservation as, without Jacob’s stored sperm sample, we would never have had the option to have our own biological child. We still have two frozen embryos and nine more vials of sperm stored and hope to increase our family in the future.
Unfortunately, the NHS currently only funds IVF treatment for one child, so we will need to pay to try for another child, which will cost us thousands of pounds. This is an unfortunate impact of cancer on our future and means that for many, having more than one child is not a possibility. It is something that we are worried about for the future but, even if we are unable to afford to try for another child, we are beyond grateful to have Jonah.
Although maintaining our relationship during Jacob’s cancer treatment was very difficult, it was also one of the most rewarding experiences we have been through as a couple and brought us closer together than we could ever have imagined. Cancer was not the end for us; in fact it was just the beginning.