OB/GYN describes her struggle with infertility at age 42

Here’s an interesting perspective on one person’s struggle with infertility: an OB/GYN.

In a blog post in the Washington Post maternal-fetal medicine specialist Dr. Shannon M. Clark laments that she did not start sooner and describes her experience at the 42 to try to have a baby.

“As an obstetrician-gynecologist who specializes in the care of high-risk women, I see many patients who are older mothers and older first-time mothers; for several reasons, any pregnancy over the age of 35 — “advanced maternal age” — is automatically considered high-risk. But as a 42-year-old struggling with infertility, I can’t help but feel that the increasing number of women having babies later in life hides the reality of how difficult it can be. Forty-something childbearing may be more common today, but the truth is that the biological clock is still very real.

Despite my years of training and work with expectant mothers, I never realized how hard it would be to conceive at this age. No matter why a woman has waited to have children or how healthy she is, her ovaries release fewer eggs and eggs of lower quality as she ages. The changes accelerate drastically by 37. Like many of my patients, I was healthy, educated, had traveled the world, and was finally ready to settle down and pursue the next phase of my life. But after two years of trying everything to become a mom, I now see that no matter what we hear about 40 being the new 30, fertility doesn’t work that way.

Here’s how things looked for me: one miscarriage, two hysteroscopies, five cycles of IVF, one embryo transfer with my own eggs and one embryo transfer with donor eggs.”

I recommend this article for anyone trying to conceive, or especially if you are thinking about putting off having a child or not preserving your fertility with egg or embryo freezing.