Love Island star Amy Hart on egg freezing for early menopause: ‘I had to prepare for the future’

Any single woman who wants children and is worried about her fertility need only look to Amy Hart for inspiration.

The former Love Island star described herself as “famously single” when she decided to have fertility tests in 2020 – at the age of just 27 – because her mum, grandmother and auntie had gone through the menopause in their early 40s.

A ‘fertility MOT’ suggested she was heading for an early menopause too, so she spent around £15,000 on several rounds of egg freezing. Yet after her first egg collection procedure, she met Sam Rason, the man who was to become her fiancé and the father of her precious son Stanley, who was conceived naturally.

“I was famously single, couldn’t find a boyfriend anywhere, so I went for a fertility MOT just to see where I was at,” says the 31-year-old podcaster and influencer, who appeared on Love Island in 2019.

“The clinic suggested that I go down the egg freezing route. It was never an issue about the state of my fertility – it was the longevity. I didn’t have all the time in the world, so I had to prepare for the future.

“And that made me really calm because I was like ‘I’ve got them in the freezer’.

“And then I fell pregnant naturally, unplanned,” she says happily.

Nevertheless, she went through more rounds of egg collection and freezing, and now has eggs in the freezer at a London clinic, which she describes as “insurance”.

“I know I’ve got that back-up,” she explains. “I was all for solo motherhood – I planned I was going to be 35. But then I met Sam and I didn’t need to do that – and now I’m 31 with an almost one-year-old!

“My goal would be to obviously always have my babies naturally, but if I needed to, I’d do IVF with fresh eggs first, then use the frozen ones. And if I don’t end up using them, then I’ll donate them.”

But for the moment, Hart adores being a mum to 10-month-old Stanley, and says: “I’m loving it. I’m very lucky – he’s a really easy baby. He’s never had any problems with feeding or sleeping – he slept through the night at seven weeks old. He’s just a really happy baby, I’ve been so lucky.”

And she definitely wants more  kids – maybe even a lot more.

“I’d love more,” she admits. “We’re getting married later on this year, and after that I’ll hopefully get pregnant again.

“I’d love 20,” she says with a laugh. “I follow all these big Mormon families on YouTube, they’ve got like 16 kids. But we’re so torn on this. We’d love four, we’d love a really big family, but we’re both self-employed in really volatile industries.

“Now that Stanley’s here, I’d want him and our next child to do whatever hobbies they want, and go on whatever school trips they want – but every other child you have then cuts the pot of money down. So we’ll see what happens. But definitely two. Probably three, maybe four.

“My thing about three kids has always been who sits on their own when you go to Disney? Everyone says to me it’s the mum – the mum sits with the bag. Not this mum!”

Instead of sitting on her own with a bag, Amy hosts the Love Island podcast three nights a week, has been interviewing celebrities for other podcasts, plans to create more ‘organic content’ for her 1m Instagram followers, and is working as an ambassador for the new fertility website femme health, which she describes as an “online trying-to-conceive department store”.

But how is she finding being a working mum?

“That’s been the bit that I’ve found the hardest thing,” she admits. “Obviously I’m very fortunate that I don’t have a nine-to-five job and it’s really flexible. But at the same time, it means that it’s quite hard to switch off.

“So what I’ve started doing this year is ‘mumdays’ – instead of Monday it’s Mumday. I’m going to put him in nursery on Fridays, and in exchange for that, Mondays are just his day, and I don’t do any work. I don’t have any emails or anything, and we just have a really nice day.

“Last year, I just felt like we had it planned that I was going to cram all my work into three days, but it just doesn’t work like that. It was getting to a stage where I always felt like I was behind, I was always running to catch up, and I was really stressed about it all. So this has put a lot more routine and calmness into my life.”

The busy mum is also trying to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

“I’m trying to eat more healthily,” she admits. “When I was pregnant, I literally loved it – it was the first time in my life that I hadn’t counted calories since I was a child. And I made the most of that – three hot chocolates a day, cake all the time, literally eating whatever I wanted. And then I dragged that on for the first nine months of Stanley’s life – I don’t know whether I thought I was still pregnant or what!

“But this year, I’m shredding for the wedding. I’m eating really healthily, cooking everything from scratch, trying to make really good swaps where I can, and exercising – I’m trying to go to the gym quite a few times a week.”

She puts Stanley in the gym creche, which she says he loves, and explains: “It means I can get back in the gym – I think it’s just so good for mental health and I want to be as healthy as I can for Stanley.”

Amy Hart is an ambassador for femme health, a new online one-stop shop for everything you need from your first to your last period, including products for fertility, conception, sex and menopause.