Amy Dowden says becoming a mum 'could be dangerous' after cancer battle
Amy Dowden has opened up about wanting to become a mother someday when it’s "safe" for her to become pregnant after undergoing hormone treatment for breast cancer.
The Strictly Come Dancing star, 34, was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in 2023 and underwent a mastectomy, chemotherapy, and hormone therapy. Appearing on Loose Women on Monday 10 February, Dowden said she hopes to have children in the near future.
Asked if she has thought about when she wants to pursue motherhood, Dowden told the Loose Women panel: "At the moment, it would be too soon. I had hormone-fed cancer so I put my body into early menopause and it would be too dangerous now to conceive.
"But I really want to be a mum. I’ve always wanted to be a mum. We do have five embryos and I hope one day, if it’s safe to do so, I do get the privilege and honour to be someone’s mummy."
Hormone-fed cancer refers to cancer that use hormones to develop and spread. These include cancers that are dependent on oestrogen, such as breast cancer, ovarian cancer and uterine cancer.
Patients who undergo hormone therapy to treat these types of cancers will have the hormone levels in their body lowered or blocked to stop breast cancer cells from feeding on the hormones and growing.
The change in hormone levels can cause women to enter menopause prematurely. They may experience symptoms associated with menopause, such as hot flushes and insomnia, and their fertility can also be affected.
Last month, Dowden told the What If? Podcast that she had her eggs retrieved before treatment and has had five embryos frozen so that she and husband Ben Jones would have the chance to try for a baby.
She told host Lorraine Kelly that she will hopefully be able to try for pregnancy "in a couple of years, when [doctors] feel it’s safe".
She also revealed that she and Jones have also discussed "lots of other opportunities" if she is unable to get pregnant.
"Hopefully in the years to come we’ll be lucky enough to become parents too, but [we're] taking every day as it comes."
According to MacMillan Cancer Support, doctors usually advise patients to wait at least two years after cancer treatment before trying to get pregnant. This is because, for some cancers, the risk of cancer coming back is higher in the first two years after diagnosis and treatment.
It can also be because this gives patients and their fertility time to recover from treatment.
Pregnancy can raise hormone levels naturally, which stokes fears that it may encourage hormone-fed cancer to return. However, research shows that there is no significant increase in risk of breast cancer recurrence associated with pregnancy.
Watch: Strictly's Amy Dowden emotional over missed milestone in cancer recovery
Read more about breast cancer:
Amy Dowden says she feels ‘back to the old Amy’ after cancer treatment (Yahoo Life UK, 3-min read)
Major trial launched to explore how AI could transform breast cancer screening (PA Media, 5-min read)
‘The symptom that led to my breast cancer diagnosis’ (Yahoo Life UK, 5-min read)
