Making Babies in your 40s: Recent Episodes
Making Babies in your 40s
The Making Babies in your 40s inaugural podcast is dedicated to all the babies in the world not yet born to older parents struggling to make a baby.
My message is to make that first appointment with a fertility doctor to action your baby dreams.
You need to put yourself into one of two halves. The half with preconditions or the half without preconditions.
IVF for a 40 year old is a completely different story. You need to know what you do not know sooner than you otherwise would to action a baby plan.
The strategies I recommend to help 40 year olds who face grim statistics and often dashed hopes. Ignore the naysayers to avoid negativity, choose a doctor who treats older patients like you to receive better personalised service, and surround yourself with a positive cheer squad whether that be your partner or friends who are like-minded. Information exchange for this older sub group is key to keeping you on track.
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These are the questions to ask to work out whether your clinic is a good fit for you. You want to know if your doctor treats patients like you. Some of the patients at your clinic should be at the tip of the iceberg in terms of patient age and fertility severity to give you better odds of success. Ask for age related percentages of success and whether protocols are tailored to the poor prognosis group and how, about pre-treatment if any, the testing of embryos, if recommended, the culturing of embryos and particular treatments or services and whether your doctor is involved in research and therapies for older patients. Individualised care is key. You do not want your last chance of pregnancy squandered on a clinic that is not the right fit for you.
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Choose a clinic that treats patients like you. You don't want to be the only 40 year old poor prognosis patient. You want to better your odds with tailored treatment. You want the right type of protocol for you, and to have a discussion about the fertility drugs, the timing of extraction and implantation, the services on offer and latest therapies and a specialist who is at the forefront of the latest research. A clinic that sees the hardest cases is often the best for older patients, which is why success rates alone are not determinative.
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This episode is a quick overview of all the challenges, biological, social and legal that confront older mothers and how to find the best information from what sources. This episode gives a big picture insight into finding the right clinic, the right treatment and the right options for you to give you the best chance of success. You don’t have time to waste because time is not on your side.
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The Making Babies in your 40s podcast Episode 5 is dedicated to all the older parents struggling to make a baby and wanting to know exactly how IVF is different for a 40 year old.
It is not just that your odds of success are lower. Your treatment should be tailored to take account of your age. I discuss some of the ways fertility treatment has differed in the past as compared to treatment for a younger patient. I am not a doctor so the point is that treatment needs to take account of the latest research.
In the past, age has factored into the IVF drugs, the cycle length, the extraction point for retrieval of the eggs, the culturing of the embryos and the implantation back into the uterus. Basically everything is affected by age.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Making Babies in your 40s podcast Episode 4 is dedicated to all the older parents struggling to make a baby and wanting to know about in vitro fertilisation, fertilisation outside of the body.
I discuss what it is and decipher some of the lingo.
In a nutshell, IVF has you taking IVF drugs for a certain length of time in the hope of triggering your body to grow more follicles, ensuring that sperm meets any egg extracted in the petri dish to hopefully produce a viable embryo that survives implantation back in the uterus. Obviously that presupposes a lot!
Things like implanting a fresh embryo or freezing an embryo for a sibling cycle down the track need to be seen through a fertility doctor’s 40 year old patient lens. Everything needs to be tailored to a 40 year old to better the odds of success.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Making Babies in your 40s podcast Episode 3 is dedicated to all the older parents struggling to make a baby and wanting to know what their options are.
Step two is to make a fertility plan right from the start. Tailor your plan to your constraints whether they be financial or emotional. By emotional I mean whether you are open to considering potential fallbacks that you never thought possible a decade ago –things like donor conception, surrogacy, and going it alone without a partner.
A plan is a psychological buffer to setbacks. If you plan for the worst, the upside will take care of itself. You may never need a fallback at all. On the flipside, what you previously considered undesirable may in fact become your best move ever – a defining moment in your life. It’s all a matter of perspective and planning will help you adjust your expectations as you go along.
You are responsible for your big picture plan. Your fertility doctor is responsible for the minutiae of your treatment – what to do to better your particular odds given your parameters.
The best clinic will tune in to your life plan and encourage you to realise your baby dreams. Your fertility doctor should be supportive of your options and advise when you need to change treatment, change clinic or get other people involved.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Making Babies in your 40s podcast Episode 2 is dedicated to all the older parents struggling to make a baby and wanting to know who to see.
Step one is to choose the right fertility specialist – one that ideally treats the hard cases and understand aging ovaries best. This is more important than statistics alone because older patients pull a clinic’s success rates down.
You need to view different treatments and know when to switch treatments through the lens of your fertility doctor who treats women like you – the women most likely to fail cycles.
Do you due diligence on prospective clinics by asking the right questions.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The Making Babies in your 40s inaugural podcast is dedicated to all the babies in the world not yet born to older parents struggling to make a baby.
My message is to make that first appointment with a fertility doctor to action your baby dreams.
You need to put yourself into one of two halves. The half with preconditions or the half without preconditions.
IVF for a 40 year old is a completely different story. You need to know what you do not know sooner than you otherwise would to action a baby plan.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.