Are You Waiting Too Long to Have a Baby?
Right. So you have just turned 30, are single (or married), in good health, rapidly shimmying up the pole of your career, have a fun set of friends to hang out with, and have recently bought a brand new car. You should be completely satisfied, right? Well, of course you would be, if it weren’t for that ominous little sound that has begun to intrude on your consciousness 24-7-the inexorable tick-tock of your biological clock. Instead of getting sucked into the hysteria, your time would be better spent learning about your body, chalking out a plan and then taking action.
STALLING FOR TIME
How late is too late? Is all the paranoia about late pregnancies really justified? Which pressures-biological, social, emotional, financial-should you consider when you make your decision about the right time to don the mom mantle?
FERTILITY FACTS
“I’ve been to my gyno for all sorts of check-ups and they’ve found nothing wrong,” says executive Rebecca. 33, whose banker husband has also been through a whole gamut of tests. “We’ve been trying for over two years, without any success. It’s really frustrating. The couple is now considering visiting a fertility clinic. This is where the causes of infertility come into play. The older your eggs, the harder it is for them to be fertilized and the higher the chances of chromosomal problems that increase the risk of birth defects and miscarriage.
Irrregular ovulation-which increases with age-may make it more difficult to conceive. The peak reproductive years for women are 26 to 30. It may take more time to get pregnant between 30 and 35, but women at that age aren’t at severe risk of infertility. Simply put. While a 30-year-old takes around six months to conceive, a 35-year-old needs nine months. If you’re under 35, healthy, have regular periods, and have been screened for STDs, you have to try to conceive for at least a year before most doctors will screen you and your partner for fertility problems, says Malpani. Should you have difficult’ becoming pregnant, there are steps you can take.
If you’re not ovulating regularly, you may be put on hormonal drugs, which stimulate egg production-so much so that some of the drugs may lead to multiple conceptions. If your tubes are blocked, your doctor might correct them through surgery, and depending on the type of complications you are having, your doctor may suggest intrauterine insemination (IUI). In an IUI, sperm is injected directly into the woman’s uterus. In vitro fertilization IVF-where a woman’s eggs are extracted and combined with sperm in a petri dish and. when fertilized, placed back in the mother or a surrogate-is an option many women turn to when other methods have failed. Although it’s an invasive and expensive procedure, the average success rate is about 22.5 per cent-about the same chances a fertile couple has of conceiving naturally.
Sometimes the reasons for not being able to conceive need not be medical at all. Working couples these days are under huge amounts of stress and this can cause oblation cycles to go awry, Couples who come home exhausted are hardly likely to indulge in sex regularly. It is also likely that one of them is traveling during the woman’s fertile period. This phenomenon is informally called unexplained infertility- where there is nothing physically wrong with either of the partners, they are doing everything right, but the woman just does not get pregnant.” By the time they realize that something isn’t working and start getting worried about it, too much time has passed and panic sets in.
