I’m sitting across the desk from my neurologist, Dr. Gayatri Devi, the Director of the New York Memory Services, a Clinical Associate Professor at New York University School of Medicine, President of the National Council on Women’s Health and author of The Calm Brain.
Me: Twenty years ago I was diagnosed as being infertile and underwent five years of infertility treatment. It was a physical and emotional roller coaster. Daily doctor visits. Blood tests and hormones that I never knew existed were injected into my body. Every month I would pray and hope to hear, “You’re pregnant.” Every month I spent thousands of dollars to get a ticket for this ride (insurance didn’t cover infertility treatment). I look back and realize it was like I was possessed. Or maybe it was more like I was in infertility jail – I couldn’t get out, not even for good behavior. My mantra was, “Just one more month.” I thought it was like other things in life that worked for me – try harder and I’ll succeed.
Dr. Devi: How old were you?
Me: 34-39 years old.
Dr. Devi: Were you ever pregnant?
Me: Yes, when I was in my 20s. I had a miscarriage.
Dr. Devi: You are not infertile. In your mid to late 30s, you were trying to get pregnant at a less than optimal time in a women’s reproductive cycle. The reality is that you could have been very fertile in your 20s. You could have had babies every year in your 20s. But in your mid to late 30s, you were trying to conceive when timing wasn’t on your side.
Then Dr. Devi said something that made me really think: “We use technology for everything else in life, why not embrace technology to give women child-bearing strategies and choices?”
What does she mean by that? Freezing eggs when women are most fertile – in their 20s, not their 30s. According to the Reproductive Biology Associates: “Fertility in women is greatest when they are between 20 and 28 years of age. By the age of 35, a woman’s chance of conceiving per month is decreased by half. By age 45, the natural fertility rate per month is reduced to only 1%.”
