Cancer Survivor Pregnant Years After Freezing Just Three Eggs Before Chemotherapy
After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022, Nicole chose fertility preservation to freeze eggs before her cancer treatment began. Years later, she is now pregnant with a baby boy from one of those frozen eggs. “Cancer took a lot from me,” says Nicole, “But because of fertility preservation and the experts at Fertility Answers, it didn’t get to take my dreams.”
A cancer diagnosis changed her trajectory
The last thing Nicole expected to find was a small lump in her breast. It was 2022 and she was 32 years old at the time. Nicole and her husband Derek were in the midst of trying for a second child. They were ready to provide their son, Christian, a sibling.
But instead of visiting Fertility Answers seeking assistance with getting pregnant as they intended to do, the Vinton couple found themselves sitting across the desk from Dr. John Storment mapping out her fertility preservation before cancer treatment. Nicole had just been diagnosed with stage 2B invasive ductal carcinoma breast cancer and the future she had just recently imagined for her family was rapidly changing directions.
Her subsequent treatment over the next year would require surgery, sixteen rounds of chemotherapy and Taxol, and then twenty rounds of radiation. And since Nicole’s breast cancer was 100 percent estrogen and progesterone driven, she would also need to be on hormone blockers for years to completely shut down hormone production. This essentially puts the ovaries to sleep and forces menopause. Because of this, her oncologists told her it would be nearly impossible to get pregnant in the future naturally. They recommended she consider fertility preservation through egg freezing before treatment began.
Egg freezing can help women conceive after cancer treatment
Nicole quickly scheduled an appointment at Fertility Answers in Lafayette. In the short window of time after her mastectomy but before her other treatment began, Nicole would stimulate her ovaries to produce multiple eggs to freeze. “Everything had to happen so fast,” she remembers. “Before I could even begin chemo, Dr. Storment and his team at Fertility Answers stepped in and helped me quickly get started, giving me hope for a future that felt so uncertain at the time.”
Because Nicole had low ovarian reserve, only three eggs were able to be retrieved and frozen after ovarian stimulation. While disappointed with the low yield, she didn’t have time to consider trying another stimulation. Her attention at that moment needed to be on beating her cancer for her family. Nicole would have to trust that her three frozen eggs could one day help her and Derek have another child. “As I kept telling myself, you only need one,” remembers Nicole. In hindsight, she didn’t realize how true these thoughts would be.
Their one and only chance
Fast forward to 2026, and Nicole was finally given the green light to consider pregnancy again. “Years later, Fertility Answers was there for us again, this time to help us fertilize those same eggs and walking us through every step of the way.” Knowing she would not be able to conceive naturally, Nicole’s only hope was the three eggs she had frozen. But, after being thawed and fertilized, only one embryo made it and tested normal.
With all their hopes riding on their one and only embryo transfer in June 2026, Nicole and Derek prayed for a miracle. And a miracle they received. “Now one of those little frozen eggs is our baby boy growing in my belly.” Baby Wyatt is due in March 2027 and will soon make Christian a big brother.
“I will never be able to fully express how thankful I am for Dr. Storment and the entire Fertility Answers team. What they do is so much more than medicine. They helped preserve a piece of my future at a time when I was simply trying to survive long enough to have one,” says Nicole. “We are forever grateful for the hands God placed in our story.”
