I wasn’t planning on getting pregnant now. What should I do now so that I don’t have a problem getting pregnant later?
Planning for a future pregnancy – or not planning but knowing that you want to have a family after school, career, and social goals are met may be something you don’t want to deal with right now. After all, your girlfriend is 37, stopped her birth control pill 1 month ago, and just found out that she is pregnant. It would be wonderful if it were so easy for everyone to conceive when she wants to. Unfortunately it is not.
A woman is born with a finite number of eggs (she cannot make more) and these eggs age lose their quality (and ability to produce normal babies) with each passing year. Biologically we were meant to conceive in our late teens to early twenties. Socially we were not. Egg quality begins to diminish after 25 (!!) but more dramatically after 35. Women in their late thirties and forties may require multiple fertility treatments in order to get the normal healthy egg to fertilize and “go the distance”. For these women the use of donated eggs from a younger woman may be the most likely way of taking home a baby.
But how can you know the likelihood that you will have difficulty getting pregnant when you are ready to? How do you know what to do? Is there something that you can do now to help you plan your reproductive future?
Fertility doctor Jane Miller is launching a Fertility Awareness Campaign to help you to answer these questions. The staff at North Hudson IVF will perform ovarian reserve screening consisting of a vaginal ultrasound for antral follicle count and blood tests for estradiol, FSH and AMH. Based upon these test results Dr. Miller will make recommendations to help you to maximize your chances for pregnancy – when you were planning or hoping to conceive. In many cases there will be nothing to worry about for many years. In other cases egg freezing or formal consultation may be indicated.