Sarah Herron, most well known for her appearance on season 17 of The Bachelor and as a popular wellness and beauty influencer on Instagram, recently opened up on social media about her issues with fertility and being unable to fulfill her life-long dream of starting a family. She updated her following by creating a post on Instagram with a caption describing the next steps she has taken to move forward in her fertility journey, and the recent issues she’s been facing along the way.
On her Instagram account, Sarah shares with her 285,000 followers her nature-filled adventures, couples photos of her and her husband Dylan Brown, and various stories from her 34 years of living. In addition to portraying the highlights of her life, she also details her low points. Much of her feed is dedicated to representing a full picture of her life, struggles included through long captions that help to make her followers gain a closer connection to her. Some of these posts deal with subject matter like her struggles with her anxiety disorder, how her life is impacted by her limb differences, and her battle against fertility issues.
She relays on a post from March 19th of this year that she was diagnosed with Diminished Ovarian Reserve, a condition that causes ovaries to “lose [their] reproductive potential, compromising fertility,” according to an article from ColumbiaDoctors.org. This condition eventually affects all women as they approach middle age, making it more difficult to conceive as they age past 30.
Sarah states in this post that she and Dylan had been trying for seven months with no success and that after fertility testing, her “egg count and quality is low.” She also mentions in this post that she was beginning to take Letrozole which is a medication that stimulates ovulation and helps to increase fertilization rates. She concludes her emotional description by reaching out to her followers to provide advice and share their experiences in the comments.
In a succinct Instagram update from March 25th, Sarah describes how she suspensefully awaited her first consultation with a reproductive endocrinologist. Reproductive endocrinologists, also known as fertility specialists, are helpful in understanding the root causes of women’s fertility issues and the treatments that are right for each individual. In her most recent update about her issues with fertility, Sarah again mentions her experiences with fertility specialists.
Sarah kept her Instagram followers updated with her fertility journey in a post from April 24th of this year, excitedly captioning a post of her and Dylan about finding a specialist that finally felt like a right fit for the couple. This post came after her mentioning previously that she had already been working with a specialist, but according to this post, she felt it necessary to find one that more suited her needs.
She announced that the specialist she chose and is currently consulting with is Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh, who can be found on Instagram as @eggwhisperer.
Dr. Eyvazzadeh is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and is well-known for her TUSHY Method, which is a slew of fertility screenings that allow her to understand the root of her clients’ fertility issues. In her mission statement, she strives to focus on educating the women she works with so that they can better understand how their body functions while also making this access to education affordable for those seeking to grow their family.
In addition, Dr. Eyvazzadeh helped found her Freeze and Share Program, which allows women to freeze their eggs at no cost if they are willing to donate half of those eggs to families in need of egg donors. This program has allowed hundreds of women to gain access to freezing their eggs, eliminating the enormous financial barrier that many face in issues of fertility.
Aside from announcing that she chose Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh as her fertility specialist, Sarah updated her followers about her hormone treatment, reporting that the rounds of Letrozole she had been taking to stimulate ovulation had “not been effective” and caused her to “develop a cyst as a result of the over-stimulated hormones.” She states, however, that the cyst should subside on its own and that she is waiting to visit Dr. Eyvazzadeh until the cyst is fully gone.
Near the end of the caption, she mentions that she and Dylan plan to head to the Bay area after the cyst is gone to begin egg retrievals and potentially take the next steps necessary to progress in her fertility treatment. While she and Dylan appear to have a long journey ahead, Sarah’s post left fans hopeful for the couple and empowered by Sarah’s willingness to share about her fertility struggles.
While Sarah’s fertility journey has had a few bumps in the road, her most recent post had an optimistic tone despite the problems she’s currently facing with her health and the potential issues in the future. By finding a specialist that was right for her and starting to head in perhaps the right direction, it appears that she’s excited to understand the root of her fertility issues and is becoming hopeful for her future and building her family with Dylan.