Seems like a terrible and heartless thing to ever say, right? The death of the oldest woman to give birth from in vitro fertilization (IVF) was announced this week; she was 69 years old and is survived by her twin sons. This naturally brings up a lot of questions I hear from women on a regular basis concerning IVF and assisted reproduction technologies (ART).
Women are waiting longer on average to begin having children in the last 20-30 years due to careers, education and other opportunities not traditionally available to women. As a result, more women are finding that natural conception has become increasingly difficult. On the opposite side of this coin is the “Octomom” fiasco in which a woman with no medical need for IVF was given a rather radical treatment resulting in the birth of 8 children.
Why the difficulty?
It is common knowledge that women over the age of 30 begin to experience marked declines in potential fertility. The primary reason for this decrease in fertility is the age of the eggs which her body is supporting to maturation.
Tags : infertility, ivf
Categories : In Vitro Fertilization
RSS feed for comments on this post
Joanne
July 16th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
The word really needs to start getting out to women to stop waiting so long, over 30’s find it increasingly difficult add into that the decline in Male Fertility and you have a natural disater waiting to happen!
Getting pregnant is not as easy as one would think, the younger you are the better your chances.
Great article!
One Response