When I read last week about more than a hundred women who discovered that their frozen eggs and embryos may not have been viable due to an error in the freezing process, my heart went out to them.

I'd like to say I couldn't imagine how they must feel, but I could—all too well. Because I know firsthand exactly what it feels like to have done everything you could to preserve your fertility, only to have all your hope ripped away from you. It's downright devastating.

In my case it wasn't due to a technical error, but I vividly remember the July 2017 phone call telling me that of the last seven eggs they had thawed, only five had thawed normally, and of those five only two were fertilized – both abnormal. There was no chance they would form an embryo, let alone the baby I so desperately wanted.

Years later, I can still remember how utterly devastated I felt. If I think about it too much, tears still sting my eyes.

'Nothing?' I remember asking. 'I do not have anything?'

In an instant, I felt like my dreams of motherhood had been stolen from me. I'm not one for daydreams and flights of fancy, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought about the potential those frozen eggs held.

Even though I knew there were no guarantees, I couldn't help but think about what it might feel like to be pregnant; to hold my baby in my arms; to see that baby become a walking, talking toddler.

It only made sense that after doing everything I could to ensure I could become a mother – three years earlier, at the age of 36, I had three cycles of egg freezing, a total of 14 eggs for a sum of around £14,000 – I would wonder what my future descendants would look like, whether I would have a son or a daughter, and imagine the person they might become when they grew up.

Then in an instant there was nothing left.

So I know exactly how the 136 patients who froze their eggs and embryos in the assisted conception department of Guy's & St Thomas' Hospital in London in September and October 2022 must feel.

In recent weeks they will have received a letter telling them that there is a 'production issue' with some bottles of a solution that may have been used to freeze their hard-won eggs and embryos, which could mean they are 'finishing the thawing process' might not survive. and may not be useful in treatment'.

A sober list of hypothetical 'mays' that will undoubtedly have created a maelstrom of emotions.

After my own crushing phone call, I tried to explain how heartbroken I felt. But everyday language felt inadequate to describe the complexity of grief, loss and frustration I was experiencing.

On eggedonblog.com, the website where I documented my treatment, I wrote that I felt “sad, angry and resentful,” and lamented the fact that I had “nothing to say that didn't cry and rage at the world that it was so '. really unfair'.

Because, as I put it at the time, 'three years ago I froze my eggs, knowing that I might never have a child from those eggs, but knowing that it was a positive step I could take at a time when everything seemed very looked gloomy.

'I do not regret it. I really don't, but I didn't do it just because I wanted to be able to look back without regret. I did it because I wanted the opportunity to get pregnant from eggs that were younger than me. And I no longer have that option.'

Because those are frozen eggs and embryos: possibilities.

Some of the patients at Guy's Hospital will have been women, like me, who had not met the right person to have a child with, but were concerned about the impact their age might have on their fertility.

It is not impossible that they can still get pregnant with their own eggs. (I tried – and failed – this and ended up using donor eggs to become a mother.) Others, however, were cancer patients who may have since undergone treatment that left them infertile.

But I don't just feel pity for these women, I feel a seething, angry outrage on their behalf. Because the hospital knew this was a problem almost a year ago.

In March last year, just seven months after the women had frozen their eggs, they were informed of the problem. So why did it take so long for them to share the information?

This unnecessary delay has only exacerbated the tragedy. In a lifetime, a year may not feel like much. But when you talk about fertility, and every month counts, it can be the difference between success and failure.

When I underwent my own egg freezing treatment and then tried IVF with my own eggs at age 40, time felt like it was of the essence.

With each month that passed, I worried that my fertility was declining. I took a vacation so I could get treatment, and when a cycle had to be canceled because I had a cyst on my ovary, I feared this was the only one: my last fertile cycle.

So it is completely inexcusable that the clinic knew about these problems and – it seems – withheld this information from patients for 11 months. The arrogance, the complete disregard for the impact on patients' lives is – well, I was going to say unbelievable, but it's not.

Having been treated by four fertility clinics in the last ten years, and while many of the staff I encountered were friendly and compassionate, there is a culture in these places that seems worryingly prevalent.

Whether it's waiting hours for a scheduled appointment, having to chase down test results, or having to deal with thoughtless comments that feel casually cruel, like the receptionist telling me that if I didn't pay the £120 for a blood test there and then the results would be destroyed.

Then there was the anesthetist who hadn't read my notes and saw that I was trying to get pregnant myself with donor sperm, who asked where my other half was; and the nurse who cheerfully quizzed a desperate friend about her plans for Mother's Day. It all smacks of a lack of attention to the patient.

And this catastrophic delay in informing patients is the culmination of this.

I know that if you are one of the women affected, nothing I say will change what happened and the sense of loss and injustice you feel.

But as someone once told me after another failed IVF cycle: there are many ways to create a family and you will find the right one for you.

When I received that devastating phone call, I could never have anticipated that less than a year later, while trying – and failing – to get pregnant with the help of an anonymous sperm donor, I would meet the man who would later become my husband. and the father of my child.

Nor could I have imagined that having a child of my own would entail the altruism of an egg donor, or that I would have the ability to love a child to whom I am not genetically related in the way I fiercely believe. , proud and deeply loved. my son. They are without a doubt the right family for me.

Names have been changed.

By Kinta Walsh-cotton for Daily Mail Australia

Published: 01:46 EST, January 28, 2024 | Updated: 01:46 EST, January 28, 2024

Imagine… French and Saunders: pointed, bitchy, bitter

Judgement:

The repair shop

Judgement:

Physicists call it the Yentob effect – a gravitational field of super-serious artistry that compresses everything light and fun into a dense, humorless mass.

Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders battle it out for about eight minutes, in an hour-and-a-half career retrospective. They even tried to give it a self-mockery, Imagine… French And Saunders: Pointed, Bitchy, Bitter (BBC1).

Friends lined up at the start to ironically declare what terrible people they are, how difficult they are to work with. “Narcissists,” Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins agreed. “I hated their work,” Kathy Burke claimed.

But the Yentob effect swallows all the jokes and doesn’t let an ounce of levity escape. French and Saunders knew this and satirized it twenty years ago in a skit in which they played “free-runners” or urban gymnasts, showing off their jumps and jumps to Alan Yentob himself.

Alan sent himself upstairs on that occasion, but now he was determined to force the duo to take themselves, and him, seriously.

Their former comic colleague Alexei Sayle fell into the Yentob trap and pontificated on the importance of alternative comedy in the 1980s. “What I think we were trying to do,” he drank, “was to get people to laugh about the truth of the absurdities of their own lives. But there was a kind of central honesty behind it that had never really been attempted, you know,” he hesitated. “I was aware, I think, that we were creating a new art form.”

Alexei was Yentobbed!

What followed was a catalog of clips from their shows. But because French and Saunders comedies rely so heavily on characters rather than one-liners, these segments were only funny if you remembered the context.

Both women talked with studied care, not even walking on eggshells but tiptoeing around them, whether discussing their early friendship or analyzing why they work much less together now. Dawn revealed the moment that made her decide to pull the plug on their sketch series for good in 2008 – a lukewarm routine that saw her singing with pop star Anastasia.

“I got in the car and cried all the way home,” she said, seething at the memory. “I hated that, I hated everything about the day, I’ll never do that again, I’ll never feel so humiliated again.”

Jennifer sat next to her, stunned and silent, apparently hearing this for the first time. A more pushy interviewer, less concerned about showing deference to their comedic genius, would have seized on this. Yentob just nodded sensibly and allowed Jennifer to pass the blame on to the Beeb’s editors-in-chief.

There were a few unexpected surprises for Ab Fab fans. Joanna Lumley described how she created Patsy, shrugging her shoulders to suggest that most of her internal organs had been removed – both physically and emotionally hollow. And Jennifer accepted Dawn’s £50,000 bet to write something about Ab Fabby by the end of this year… not another film, she said, but a spin-off. Honey, honey, that’s just meh!

For this to happen, Patsy may have to be sent to the hospital for hopelessly damaged old wrecks, The Repair Shop (BBC1). Imagine the layers of nicotine they have to scrub away. This time the craftsmen were in the shed restoring a ceramic Alsatian for a guy who worked as a police dog handler for 25 years, and peeling slats off a doctor’s precious medical certificate.

No fix ever fails, or is even very different from previous repairs, but it is reliably soothing to see such skill and care at work.

Her highly anticipated new rom-com, Everyone But You, is now in theaters.

And Sydney Sweeney shared a very flirty photo with her leading man Glen Powell, 35, as she urged fans to watch their new film.

The Euphoria star, 26, shared a summer photo of them holding hands as they lay on a floating boat on Thursday.

The duo, who have been at the center of dating rumors, raised their clasped hands in the air as they soaked up the sun together.

Sydney wore a beautiful floral print bikini while her co-star showed off his rippling abs in a swimsuit.

She cleverly referenced the film in the caption, writing, “I couldn’t imagine making this movie with anyone other than you.. @anyonebutyoumovie in theaters now!”

It comes after Sydney addressed the ongoing dating rumours between her Everyone But You co-star Glen Powell again

The actress, who is happily engaged to her fiancé, Jonathan Davino, 40, has been embroiled in romantic speculation on set as steamy photos from the set surfaced online.

And in response to the rumours, Sydney admitted that ‘it has been very difficult for Glen’ following his split from long-time partner Gigi Paris.

Speak with Glamour magazine Sydney said: ‘It was very difficult for Glen, which made me sad… because [otherwise] it was such a beautiful experience for both of us. I care about him so much.’

Sydney also explained that she prefers to keep her love life private because “people really like to build someone up and then tear them down,” she added.

She said: ‘Everyone is always so curious about who I am with and what it’s like, but I think it’s important to have something going for me.

‘I have been in a steady relationship for a long time, which is not normal in this industry and not normal for my age. What I’ve noticed about the idea of ​​celebrity is that people really like to build someone up and then tear them down.”

Sydney also revealed that her fiancé Jonathan helped produce the rom-com.

Fans began to speculate that there was a significant connection between the two when they looked particularly cozy and affectionate in the photos.

And a production member of the film claimed that some people on set “thought they were already a couple.”

They said, ‘I knew him from Top Gun. But I assumed they were a couple in real life. This is what it looked like for most of us. And also for some extras.’

Adding fuel to the fire was the demise of Glen’s relationship with model Gigi during the same period.

In April this year, his then-girlfriend Gigi unfollowed him and Sydney on Instagram, which has now become a common non-verbal sign of a breakup.

A cryptic video post shared around the same time showed Gigi walking down a sidewalk and smiling, and she captioned it, “Know your worth and on to the next.”

The unfollow was a major turnaround, after Glen’s ex previously posted a series of celebratory emojis when Sydney was announced as his costar before filming had begun.

But a source said that later Page six that Glen and Gigi had amicably split weeks before the rumors about him and Sydney started circulating, even if her Instagram post didn’t sound exactly friendly.

Both Sydney and Glen have repeatedly denied there is anything to the speculation about a romance between them.

In August, Sydney claimed that her overly affectionate public interactions with her co-star were primarily a marketing ploy for their film.

Speak with Variety, she said, “It’s a rom-com. That’s what people want! Glen and I don’t really care.

‘We have so much fun together and we respect each other so much; he’s such a hard worker, and I’m a hard worker.”

The Reality actress teased, “They want it. It’s fun to give it to them.’

Glen also denied any romantic connection when the pair were asked about it during a joint appearance on the Today show.

He said, ‘No, but we love each other. And honestly, this is one of the most spectacular people I’ve ever met. She’s really great.’

Filming for Everyone But You began in February 2023 in Sydney and elsewhere in New South Wales, Australia.

Sydney and Glen play the roles of Bea and Ben, who arrange a blind date that initially goes well before they quickly tire of each other.

But when the two end up at the same wedding, attended by both their exes, they pretend to be the perfect new couple, despite hating each other’s guts.

Everyone But You will be released in US theaters on December 21, after being delayed a week from its original date of December 15, and on December 26 in the UK.

Kylie Kelce opens up about becoming part of the husband Jason Kelce‘s famous family.

“I was on the outside at first because I got married on the inside,” Kylie, 31, said in a sneak peek Wednesday, Nov. 29, in an interview for ABC’s Impact x Nightlinewhich premieres on Thursday, November 30. “The most amazing thing is that I was welcomed with open arms.”

Kylie noted that while her husband’s family consists of parents Donna And Ed Kelce and brother Travis Kelce – is on the small side, the energy they bring is anything but small.

“It’s quite a small family, so it takes some getting used to, but it feels so warm and inviting, the way I think a big family feels, that it was kind of second nature to jump in there,” she explained. “And it’s as fun as you think.”

In the same interview, Donna, 71, admitted she never expected to find herself in the spotlight after her sons’ success on the football field. The matriarch reflected on her whirlwind of a year, from Travis and Jason’s famous Super Bowl showdown to Travis sparking a romance with the global superstar. Taylor Swift.

“I think it’s just one of those things in life where things happen one way or another and then they grow exponentially,” she explained of unexpected stardom. “This year has been one week after another and it seems like, is this ever going to stop?”

Kylie and Jason, 36, made their relationship Instagram official in November 2015 after connecting on a dating app. After three years of dating, the couple tied the knot. In November 2019, Kylie and Jason welcomed their first daughter, Wyatt. The couple expanded their family with daughters Elliotte and Bennett in March 2021 and February, respectively.

On the brothers’ “New Heights” podcast, Kylie recalled meeting the Kelce brood for the first time
in 2016 while attending the NFL Pro Bowl in Hawaii.

“We were there for Travis and it was the first time everyone was there [in the family] was in the same place at the same time,” Kylie said during the September episode, noting that it was also the first time she met Travis, 34.

For his part, Travis said he initially thought Kylie was “shy” but got to know her better while the group played a drinking game.

“You did the exact same thing Jason tried to do, which was never actually win the game. It’s basically just to make fun of whoever you’re playing with,” the tight end joked. “And you did that with Jason. And I was like, ‘Oh wow, this is a tag team that’s going to threaten America here.’

Ashes 2023: Cummins claimed Lyon did a great job and confirmed the off-spinner will not compete in the rest of the Ashes series.

London: In what would come as a huge setback for Australia, they will miss Nathan Lyon’s services in the last three Ashes Tests. After beating England by 64 points to take a 2-0 lead, Australian skipper Pat Cummins said he was not happy that Lyon – despite the injury – started batting on Sunday. Cummins claimed that Lyon did a great job and confirmed that the off-spinner will not compete in the rest of the Ashes series.

“I wasn’t exactly happy, but he wanted to go out. He did a great job. I imagine he’s (from the series),” confirmed Pat Cummins after the Lord’s Test.