Professional mental health therapist embarks on egg freezing in her thirties to preserve her fertility

LaKeitha has always been dedicated to her career path as a mental health therapist and psychologist. But she also didn’t want to take for granted that time was on her side with respect to finding a partner, settling down and starting a family. She turned to egg freezing in her thirties to preserve her fertility until that time is right.

Focused on a busy and rewarding career 

A New Orleans native, LaKeitha came to Baton Rouge in 2010 for graduate school and never left, eventually earning her Master’s and then a PhD in clinical mental health. Now she leads a group of mental health professionals at Louisiana State University. For over nine years now, LaKeitha and her team have been providing emotional support and counseling to the school’s many collegiate athletes. She specifically works closely with LSU’s women’s gymnastics, women’s basketball, indoor and beach volleyball, and men’s football programs. “I love working with athletes,” says LaKeitha. “Helping these young people work through the hard moments that come with being on a Division 1 athletic team brings me so much satisfaction.”

But over the last several years she started to feel that work was consuming her life and she became more introspective about her future outside of work. Having a family of her own one day was at the top of that list. Around the time she turned 31, she started considering egg freezing as a way to help alleviate her anxiety about not having a life partner to build a family with.

Seeking more information, LaKeitha asked her gynecologist many questions about freezing eggs. She mentioned that she wasn’t in a relationship at the time but she knew she wanted a family someday. And, she had heard about egg freezing from friends, but didn’t know a lot about it. “I was surprised when my gynecologist was not very supportive of the idea,” remembers LaKeitha. She soon was consumed again with work and put the thought of egg freezing on the back burner.

As a woman ages, fertility naturally declines

Fast forward a few years, LaKeitha again began thinking seriously about her future as a mother. She had just turned 35 and thoughts about her future fertility became more pervasive. By this time LaKeitha had changed gynecologists and brought it up at her annual appointment. Her new gynecologist, Dr. Pam Lewis, was refreshingly supportive of of egg freezing. She explained that as a woman ages, so does her eggs. And egg freezing was a logical choice for women to help preserve fertility. “My new doctor was happy that I was thinking about my fertility and future babies,” says LaKeitha. “I felt like we were on the same page about my future.”

With her doctor on her side about egg freezing in her thirties, LaKeitha had some preliminary lab tests run to get a baseline of her current fertility status. This included testing her anti-Mullerian hormone levels that helps give an indication of a woman’s ovarian reserve, or egg supply, and also what her response may be to fertility medication.

Waiting on her results, LaKeitha did some internet research on her own about AMH testing and how to interpret the results, noting that a normal range is between 1 and 4. Hers came back at 1.8. “When I received my AMH test results, I have to say that as a self-described perfectionist I was disappointed that I wasn’t on the high end of the normal range.” She remembers calling Dr. Lewis almost in tears worried that she had waited too late. “Dr. Lewis was very reassuring about my test results, but this scare prompted me to not put this off any longer,” says LaKeitha.

Family supportive of egg freezing in her thirties

Dr. Lewis soon referred LaKeitha to Dr. Neil Chappell at Fertility Answers in Baton Rouge for a consultation. “Dr. Chappell was amazing and allowed me time to think about my decision,” she said. “One of my biggest hurdles was how to explain this to my family and why it was important to me and them.” As an only child, it was important that she had the most important woman in her life, her mother, on board with her decision. At first, LaKeitha’s mom Amanda didn’t understand why she needed to undertake egg freezing in her thirties, but in time she became her biggest advocate. The experience became a unique bonding moment for them as she helped LaKeitha with her injections and accompanied her to appointments and the actual egg retrieval procedure.

With the blessing of her family, LaKeitha embarked on her egg freezing journey in September 2023. She began by injecting fertility stimulation drugs daily to increase the number of mature eggs she would produce that month. In early October, she was able to have 14 eggs retrieved, nine of which were mature enough to freeze. She documented her journey in an Instagram reel.

A year after her egg freezing procedure, LaKeitha feels even more confident in her decision. “I feel an immense amount of peace knowing that I have nine eggs on ice,” she says. “I’m still just dating with no one special person yet, but I’m really proud that I pushed myself to do something just for me.”