It’s exactly five weeks and three days until my birthday (hellooo Gemini main character season) and let me tell you personally, that TICK TICK TICK is ringing loud and clear.
Because as I’m yanked towards 34 and yet another birthday in my 30s, the same intrusive thoughts are commandeering my headspace. But to be honest they’re the same thoughts that have been lurking in my periphery since my bestie popped out a baby 11 years ago.
Time is running out to get pregnant.
Watch: The trailer for Get Me Pregnant. Post continues after video.
A decade later and the majority of my mates now have multiple kids and that teeny tiny bub I visited in hospital is preparing to start highschool. HIGHSCHOOL! Meanwhile, I’m still over here being haunted by the ghosts of dwindling fertility because, as a single woman approaching her mid-30s, the dating pool has got a lot worse. Like, A LOT.
May I present Exhibit A.
“Do you want to have kids?” my Tinder match asked me a mere five minutes into pleasantries.
“Wow right into the serious questions, hey! Haha,” I replied, deer-in-the-headlights. Had I found a man who actually KNEW WHAT HE WANTED?!
Was Alex, 33, 17 kilometres away, a potential suitor – nay parent??
“Yes, I very much do,” I answered wholeheartedly. Confidently. Hopefully. “You?”
Now what Alex’s profile failed to mention, beyond his 6'2" height and interest in books, adventure, travel and nature, was that he is also a giant d**k.
I received the following texts:
“Ok I don’t want to be rude but if it’s [a] serious relationship
I want kids.
And you are 33.”
Hold your horses now, it’s about to get worse.
“Plus my dad is [a] medical doctor.
So [I] know by 35 95 per cent eggs are gone.
So that’s very important for me.”
*Stunned silence. Anger. FURY.*
“Don’t want to be rude,” I typed back, “but f**k you.”
Was my Tinder match right?
My rage burned inside as a million mixed emotions fought for attention. Did he really think I wasn’t aware of my ageing ovaries? Did he not realise what an extremely insensitive remark that was? And, most painfully of all, was I being rejected for my dying eggs?
Because as my temper boiled away, I was left with one nagging question I didn’t want to know the answer to. Was he right?
“There's a popular perception that fertility falls off a cliff at 35,” Dr Katrina Moss, an expert in fertility from the University of Queensland told Mamamia. “That's not quite true, but what you do see is that as women hit their 30s, fertility starts to decline."
What that means in real terms is that women may have fewer eggs in their ovaries but also that the quality of those eggs will be reduced compared to women in their 20s.
“That means it can be more difficult to fall pregnant and then because the quality of the eggs is reduced, it can then be more difficult to sustain the pregnancy,” she added.
But when it comes to counting eggs, Dr Sarah Lensen from the University of Melbourne’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology says it’s not really possible to tell how many women have left.
“The use of language like ‘dead’ and ‘number of eggs’ is a bit confusing,” she told Mamamia. “Females are born with all the eggs they’re going to have and it’s way more than we need, so it’s not really about counting the number of eggs we have in our ovaries, like zooming in really close and going 1, 2, 3, 4.”
While she admits it’s not very helpful, Dr Lensen says the best way to judge fertility is based on age.
And, heartbreakingly, the stats aren’t great.
“We know that the chance of getting pregnant naturally reduces with age and the reduction starts from about the age of 30 and at the age of 35 it becomes a bit steeper,” she said.
“At the age of 35, the percentage chance [of becoming pregnant each month] is about 15 per cent, and it drops down closer to five per cent by the age of 40.”
Tell me there's hope?
I was floored. Crushed. This isn’t what I expected to hear.
But Dr Moss was less keen to put a percentage on a woman’s chances of getting pregnant “because people's individual circumstances vary so much”.
“There's genetic factors, there's gynaecological health factors, so whether women have conditions like endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome that can make it harder to conceive or harder to sustain a pregnancy,” she explained.
“There's also lifestyle factors, things like healthy weight, healthy eating, healthy exercise, not smoking, not drinking alcohol. All those things play a role in people's ability to fall pregnant.”
But wait, isn’t there a test for fertility?
Yes and no, according to both doctors.
“There is a blood test available, it’s called the AMH (Anti-Mullerian Hormone) test and commonly known as the egg timer test,” Dr Moss said. “A lot of women request it but it doesn’t have a lot of scientific validity. It’s not necessarily accurate. So it can either provide a false sense of security or a false sense of doom.”
Dr Lensen agrees.
Listen to Mia talk about 'fertility privilege' on Mamamia Out Loud. Post continues after podcast.
“It’s not very good at predicting any specific woman’s probability of getting pregnant now or in the future,” she told Mamamia. “I can understand the superficial appeal of having this test to tell you 'Do I need to hurry up and have a baby or can I rely on a lot of time?' But it doesn’t do that and it shouldn't.
“For women who take the test, a result that looks low for their age might freak them out and push them into starting a family earlier than they had planned to or push them into egg freezing, which is expensive and has its own considerations about success rates.”
While a high result could have consequences of its own.
“It might give people false reassurance and then they think they can wait a few more years to conceive when really that's not the case. So, the best thing to do is look at the percentage chance of conceiving with age and use that to inform your family planning.”
So, what next?
Whilst maintaining a healthy lifestyle is good for ovarian reserve, Dr Lensen says the only other thing to try to preserve fertility in time is egg freezing. But, she warns, it’s not a fool-proof method. In fact, it’s far from it.
“It's important for women to realise that going through one cycle of egg freezing and storing between five and 10 eggs as part of that process is not a particularly good insurance against future infertility,” she explained. "Because we know that depending on how many eggs we do, it might only give you a certain percentage chance of using those eggs to conceive in the future.
“It’s not an insurance policy, like when you take something out in case your house burns down. In the situation of egg freezing, you're taking out an insurance policy that maybe has a 20 or 30 per cent chance of paying out if you need in the future.”
So, while armed with all the information to make informed choices, fertility remains a minefield, one that I feel beyond helpless to control. But I keep coming back to one crucial component. The other side of the equation.
Because in all situations of couples struggling to conceive, a male factor contributes to 50 per cent of all cases, according to the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.
It isn’t all on us ladies – and I wish I’d told Alex that.
Image: Supplied
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