Did you freak out after watching this episode of 'New Girl'? Jess was freaking out after her gynecologist friend broke the news that a woman can lose up to 90 percent of her eggs by age 30. As cosmopolitan.com points out, Jess's panic session was funny—but do we really lose most of our eggs by age 30?
Dr. Lauren Streicher, assistant clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University
Eggs tells Cosmo that eggs "do age, but as long as you are ovulating and it's a good quality egg, it doesn't matter how many you've got in the bank."
Dr. Streicher says egg quality is more important than egg quantity, a factor that just varies from lady to lady. We are born with about 100,000 eggs and we slowly lose them over our lifetime, but there is no magic rule that says egg count drops dramatically at age 30.
"Even if you did lose 90,000 eggs by age 30, who cares?" she says. "You’ve still got 10,000. That's enough for 10,000 babies." Which would be about 9,998 more than a lot of us could handle!
Well, that's all well and good, but sounds a little bit too simple and too good to be true. So I scrolled down to the comments of the article.
A woman pointed out a study that was featured on abc two years ago: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/women-fertility-falls-lose-90-percent-eggs-30/story?id=9693015#.UMH6wJPjnIZ.
Dr. Marie Savard, a "Good Morning America" medical contributor, discussed a study which looked at the egg supply of 325 women of varying ages from the UK, the US, and also Europe and answered some frequently asked fertility questions for women.
The full study can be found here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008772.
The most important point that the findings of the study shows is that women lose eggs a lot faster than was previously thought, and that by the age of 30, we lose about 90% of our egg reserves!
The GMA piece did answer the question that the 'New Girl' episode brought up for many of us about having your eggs counted. The answer? It's not possible. You can measure the size of your ovaries and test your hormone levels, but there is no way to know for sure how many quality eggs you have left.
What is the take away message of this study & news story? Have kids earlier rather than later if possible.
I'm 31, and B & I are planning on doing IVF when I'm 32 if we are not pregnant on our own yet. We started out on this whole infertility road when I turned 27, and started seeking help when I was 29. When we started, I was still at a healthy reproductive age and by the time we hopefully get pregnant with ART I'll be entering the age of those poor women who "waited too long" to have kids. Not fair.
I wish they didn't blame it so much on women's rights and career driven goals. Some of us try to start at a younger age and still face these issues. ART is expensive for most of us, and so we don't always have the luxury of jumping into IVF as soon as we find out that conceiving naturally won't come easy to us.
I can have a career and not blame my infertility on it.
I've blogged about infertility themes on Grey's Anatomy before, in fact, I started watching the show again earlier this year (all 8 seasons, from beginning to end) just because I heard they were struggling with infertility. I also learned about Derek's ex wife, Addison's infertility troubles on Private Practice at around the same time.
I loved the adoption episode, when Meredith says that they tell you when you're going through the adoption process that, "The baby you have is the baby you were destined to have. It was meant to be."
To learn more about what Meredith & Derek's infertility diagnosis is, follow this link: http://www.wetpaint.com/greys-anatomy/articles/behind-the-medical-jargon-what-is-a-hostile-uterus.
Anyway, if I'm being honest, I have to admit that the recent turn of events, in which Meredith tells Derek she's 3 weeks pregnant really disappointed me. I should be happy for her. I should be rooting for a formal infertile sister who finally gets what we all want so badly. But I can't.
I can't because it's not real anyway. She is a fictitious character. Although it comforted me that in her storyline the writers had her sharing similar experiences as me, and brought awareness to the struggle so many of us face, I feel that having her just get miraculously pregnant without going round after round of ART just isn't fair.
It's like they are just validating the bane of every infertile woman's existence, the comment,"if you just relax and stop trying so hard, it will just happen."
In fact, I'm so mad about this, I can barely get into it.
I see in the most recent episode Meredith needs to schedule her 8 week ultrasound. I know how horrible this sounds, but I was hoping they'd have her miscarry again, but it's starting to look like they might go through with this and give them a baby. If she miscarried again though, it would bring more awareness to what so many women go through in their quest to become mothers. Getting our hopes built up so high just to have them all dashed without a moment's notice.
Yes, Mer miscarried once, but it was before she was even trying. Then she tried for a few months, and they gave up and adopted Zola. Now, they are magically back together, their house (which took them 8 seasons to slowly build and they got nowhere with it), is all the sudden finished and they are living in it with their happy little baby Zola. And now they are surprised with an unexpected pregnancy.
This is not real. And it's not fair to all of us who are not going to get this fairytale ending. Have them go through a few rounds of IVF. Show the details. Show the heartache. Show what it does to a relationship. Then let something happen whatever way you want it to, writers! But don't give this to them so easily. It's a disservice to the beautiful work you started out to do in highlighting this plight that effects so many.
The previews for the winter-season finale lef us with a bit of a cliff-hanger, having Mer express her fear that she'll miscarry again and Derek giving her a concerned look. So we'll see I guess. I know I'll be tuned it to see this thing play out either way.
In several posts, I have referred to women who have previously suffered from infertility and then moved on to successfully get pregnant and have children as "former infertiles." After reading several of the supportive responses (both in blog comments and personal messages) I was starting to thing that this might not be the best label for this group of women.
First of all, they have shown me that the pain you feel from infertility, never really goes away. Of course they are happy about their blessings and celebrated. Many of them wanted to shout their good fortune from the rooftops. One of them even told me she felt entitled to post anything and everything she felt and experienced through her pregnancy and new motherhood, because of everything she had gone through to achieve it. But even she said that watching TV shows depicting infertile women brings back a flood of old emotions rushing back to her. Even she said that after going through something like infertility, it never really leaves. It changes you forever and becomes a part of you.
I have also been thinking lately, that just because a woman achieves one successful pregnancy, doesn't mean the entire infertility roller coaster isn't going to start all over for her again when she tries to conceive additional children down the road.
A Winter 2008 article in The New Atlantis, entitled Blogging Infertility, describes how these "former infertiles" can feel abandoned by the infertile sisters they left behind once they achieve a successful pregnancy. The support network that infertiles can find in online forums, blogs, and community networks can be very powerful. Losing those connections once you become pregnant and those who used to support you every step of the way on your journey to get there stop commenting on your posts, drop off your followers list, and generally unfriend you can be emotionally devastating.
So, I was thinking, maybe there is a better label for these women caught with one foot stuck in two different worlds. "Former Infertile" is not quite accurate, since they will always carry the pain of infertility with them, even if they never struggle to conceive again. Perhaps "Alumni" is a little bit better.
Alumni suggests connections and memories of that which they once were a part of. Of course, it also implies that those who jump through all the hoops and work hard enough will be able to eventually graduate, and that just isn't the case for everyone. Some women, will never get pregnant. So thinking of women who once suffered from infertility but went on to later have children as "alumns" kind of makes it seem like those who don't eventually get pregnant did something wrong or brought it on themselves.
So maybe "former infertile" isn't the right word, and "alumni" isn't quite right either. Maybe we should just call them the lucky ones. No matter how we refer to them, we must not exclude them or abandon them, just as we do not want them to abandon us. We all need continued support and sensitivity. That is the reality of caring for someone whom infertility has touched their life.
Monday night, after my marathon of watching Teen Mom 2, I finally turned the channel and found this new show on WE channel. It's called Texas Multi Mamas (I think it was only a coincidence that I happened to be in Texas when I found the show!).
I watched it as I fell asleep, so I didn't pay attention to much of it, but I couldn't help but wonder if these were all former infertiles, who'd undergone ART treatments, and were now living "life after infertility."
Well, duh, of course they are! Natural twins, sure, but probably not triplets and certainly not quadruplets.
I Googled the show and found an article talking about the show in general: http://www.scntx.com/articles/2011/12/27/news_update/8860.txt. Seems really interesting, actually. Kind of like a window into what the future could potentially look like if we end up doing IVF some day.
B and I were going to transfer two embies. If it were up to us, we were willing to transfer up to three, but our RE said that only increases our chances of multiples, not of a pregnancy. So we agreed to transfer two. I'm sure being a MOM (Mom of Multiples) isn't easy, but I'd relish the opportunity to meet that challenge if it meant I got to be a mom. Besides, I'm the oldest of four children and grew up with my own mom doing daycare in our home. I've even spent a summer doing daycare for her by myself while she was ill and bedridden. So yes, I think if anyone can be a great MOM, it's me. But at the rate we're going, we feel that we'll be lucky now if we ever even get to have one child.
After a little more internet searching, I did come across one article that talks about one of the women's struggle with infertility: http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/mixmaster/2011/12/texas_multi-mama_teryn_todd_on.php. This was really interesting to me too, since she has been where I am right now. Her successes gave me hope, but also warned me that it might be wisest for us to wait to do IVF until we can afford multiple cycles, since it doesn't work the first time for many couples.
Most clinics have some kind of "deal" where you pay more ($26,000 at our clinic), but get 3 fresh and 3 frozen cylces, and if you don't get a live birth, you get most or all of your money back. The risk of course is if you get pregnant right away the first time, there is no refund for all the extra money you spent. Seems like it might be a better deal then I originally thought though now.
I thought I was done blogging for the day. I took a break to get some dinner and settled in to watch a little TV. As I flipped through the channels (really digging this whole cable TV thing while staying at these conference hotels), I came across Private Practice.
I remember reading on another blog that the main character, Addison, has been undergoing fertility treatments, so I decided to check it out. This was a really good episode for me to be introduced to the show with. From what I could gather, this character has used donar sperm for IUI, had a failed IVF, and was unsuccessful with adoption. Now she was interviewing surrogates. At the end of the show she had a conversation with her partner, telling him she needed a break.
He asked her if she was quitting and she said no. She said she is still going to have a baby, but she just needs SOMETHING else to focus on right now, ANYTHING else. She needed to just "be" for a while.
I'm not where she is, because I'm trying to switch my focus from our cancelled IVF to our upcoming IUI and I really need to be hopeful about it, in order to get through it. But I appreciate what the writers of this show are having this character do. It was tastefully written and gives me comfort to know that taking a break for a while can be okay too if I find I need that some day.
After a few quick Google searches, it's looking like I should start watching Grey's Anatomy again too! Apparently Meredith lost a pregnancy, then struggled to get pregnant again, and then adopted? I might have to look for these shows on Netflix or Hulu or something to watch them from the beginning so I can get caught up, but it sounds like TV I can relate too!
