Making Your Motherhood Over 40 Dreams Come True – Guest Post
By Jeannette | November 27, 2018
There are many reasons women may want to start their family later in life.
It’s common to wait to have children for educational, professional, or personal reasons like finding the right partner. Whatever your reason may be for starting your family later, once you start trying to conceive, you may encounter complications. Rest assured, despite the concerns and myths that accompany getting pregnant at a later age, many women are healthy enough to carry and deliver a baby with the assistance of donor egg IVF.
It’s Complicated
If it’s natural, then it must be easy. That’s not always the case! It may be natural for women to become pregnant, but it’s also natural for women’s eggs to deteriorate in both quality and quantity as they age. Over time, women produce fewer eggs and the eggs they do produce tend to be of lower quality than those produced in their 20s and 30s. Women in their 40s typically enter a stage known as perimenopause, when their hormone levels that are essential to a successful pregnancy begin to decline. Although it’s becoming more frequent to see older women have children, it’s unlikely for women over 40 to get pregnant without medical help – it’s simply not discussed publicly.
Donor Egg IVF – What to Expect
Before you begin any treatment, you’ll undergo testing and receive counselling from medical professionals.
You’ll be evaluated to ensure you’re as healthy as possible for pregnancy and you’re able to meet the optimal conditions to help make future implantation successful.
You’ll be counselled to ensure you understand and are comfortable with the procedures, risks, and mental and emotional aspects of egg donor IVF. Often the greatest risk to you as a donor egg recipient is the increased likelihood of having multiple children when more than one fertilized egg is transferred to your uterus.
Another important decision you’ll have to make is the type of donor egg that best suits you.
Donor eggs are either fresh or frozen. There are a number of factors to consider between the two options. In general, frozen eggs are often significantly less expensive, more readily available, don’t require a synchronization process with the donor, and have a national donor pool to choose from.
Once you’ve decided the egg type, you can select your egg donor. You’ll want to consider if you’d like to know your donor or prefer them to remain anonymous. Then, you can refine your selection according to any additional criteria you may have based on physical and personal attributes.
Frozen egg banks have the most diverse donor databases to choose from based on eye colour, hair colour, height, education level, and personal interests.
You can expect all donors to typically be younger than 32 years of age and tested to meet fertility, infectious disease, psychological, and genetic standards.
If using fresh eggs, your next step will be to prepare for your IVF cycle by synchronizing your cycle with your donor. However, if you choose to use frozen eggs, you can begin your IVF cycle when your menstrual cycle creates the most optimal implantation environment. Eliminating the synchronization requirement can shorten the IVF timeline by several months.
Once your donor eggs are retrieved (and thawed, if frozen), they’ll be fertilized with your partner’s sperm or donor’s sperm(if you’re using a sperm donor) to create embryos. After the embryos are transferred to your uterus, you’ll take a pregnancy test to determine the results of your IVF cycle.
Control What You Can
Turning a certain age doesn’t automatically exclude you from motherhood. While you can’t control your age, you can positively influence your chances of success with donor egg IVFand by establishing healthy habits as early as possible and maintaining them throughout the entire process.
Follow your intuition and take initiative to explore your options. Control the things you can, like making informed decisions, especially when selecting your egg type and donor. Knowing what your options are will empower you to make the choice that’s best suited for you and your family.
Remember, even if you’re in your 40s, your motherhood dreams can still come true.
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