So much of what I write about is to do with pregnancy, birth and parenting. It is often taken for granted. After all, antenatal teaching has no business with those who are not ante-natal, i.e. pre-birth.
But what if you never get to that stage? What if all your hopes are dashed because you happen to fall into the wrong side of a statistic?
The Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists highlighted a new review a few weeks ago, telling us that as women get older, their ovarian follicles decline with age. The gist of the review was firstly that nature reduces your fertility as you get older. Most of us probably already knew that.
But it went on to point out that the number of ovarian follicles women have affects their chances of assisted conception too.
Not just natural conception, then. “Successful IVF depends on age and egg yield which are intrinsically linked.”
There are possible ways around this. These include egg donation from a younger donor, or egg freezing when the woman is younger. I should point out, though, that there is not much evidence out there to go on. There simply isn’t enough data to draw much conclusion on their effectiveness.
The thing is, the norm these days is to have a baby later on. You know, have a bit of fun and make the most of some freedom before settling down to have a family. A woman just out of university, for instance, will not be worrying about her fertility for a few years; she wants to establish herself in the working world and have children at some unnamed point in the future.
But what if the second half of the plan never happens? Those three horribly clinical words – declining ovarian follicles – can put an end to one’s chances of parenthood. And it’s not a sudden realisation, either. It’s a long-winded discovery, which is never absolute – one can never be sure that one won’t conceive.Next time might, just might, be the one time luck plays its hand. And so an indefinite game of ‘what if?’ can be played, much to the misery of all concerned.
The evolution of our modern lifestyles, and the tendency to have children later, is not a trend likely to be reversed any time soon. Nor is it something any woman or couple should feel guilty for embracing. After all, what is life for but to be enjoyed?
It is a crying shame, though, that even in this modern age, not even technology can save us all from those three words.
Let us never take fertility for granted.
