Reasons And Truths About Age For In Vitro Fertilization

By Author: Sally Smith
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Female age is very major in consideration of the possibility for getting pregnant. The real problem is the egg number and quality - which translates over to embryo quality after fertilization. Increased infertility with age is a well documented problem and very clear in modern society. As women wait longer to have children, a larger percentage of couples have fertility problems due to the quality of the eggs, and other concerns that affect fertility and are more common in older women.

Womens liberation has brought many success to women. However, as women increasingly postpone childbearing, our society has done a very poor job of teaching people about the drop in female fertility with increasing age. Many couples learn about the impact of age when it could be too late for them already. Several couples end up needing advanced treatments such as IVF to help overcome the age related decline in egg quality. If they had tried to have a baby years sooner, good old-fashioned "sex in the bedroom" could have built the family. Dr. Mark Rispler said, "As women postpone childbearing, there is now an unrealistic expectation that medical ...
... science can undo the effects of aging".

We certainly try our best to overcome the effects of raising female age with advanced fertility treatments such as IVF. Women usually ask whether there is an age limit on having In Vitro Fertilization. All clinics will have some age limit which they will not perform in vitro fertilization with the womans own eggs. The age limit is around 42 and 45 in the US. The majority of IVF clinics let a woman to be a recipient of donor eggs through the age of about 50.

Successful pregnancy outcome with IVF are very much related to a females age - when using the womans own eggs. When there are donor eggs being used, the age of the egg donor is the significant issue. With egg donation, the age of the recipient woman does not seem to modify the chance for success. Which means that the age of the egg is very important, but the age of the uterus is not.

The age of the male partner does not seem to matter nearly as much. This is related to the fact that all of a womans eggs are present at birth. They can not be divided or be "resupplied", whereas sperm is produced constantly after puberty in men. Eggs age over time, while new sperm is constantly coming off the production line. Sperm from older men does not usually have a substantially decreased fertilizing potential as compared to sperm from younger men. However, older men often have less interest in routine intercourse, which can be a factor in chances for conception.

Many people are not informed of the decrease in fertility as the age of the female partner increases.