Female age is very critical in consideration of the possibility for getting pregnant. The real problem is the egg amount and quality - which translates over to embryo quality after fertilization. Increased infertility with age is a well documented problem and very visible 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 problems that affect fertility and are more common in older women. Womens liberation has brought many gains to women. However, as women increasingly hold up childbearing, our society has done a very poor job of instructing 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 cancel 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 alter 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 regular intercourse, which can be a factor in chances for conception. Many people are not knowledgeable of the decrease in fertility as the age of the female partner increases.
Infertility is defined as not being able to conceive a child despite trying for at least a year. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, infertility affects 6.1 million American women and their partners, about 10 percent of the reproductive age population.Though this issue concerns most women, it is a myth that infertility is always a woman's problem. Experts say that 80 percent of cases which was diagnosed with infertility are due to male problems. Infertility may be due to a single cause in either a woman or her partner, or a combination of factors that may prevent a pregnancy from occurring or continuing. According to the NWHRC (National Women's Health Resource Center), most women in their late 30s are 30 percent less fertile than they were in their early 20s. About 20 percent of infertility cases are the result of fallopian tube disease. It also added that between 30 and 40 percent of women with endometriosis are infertile. In 85 to 90 percent of all cases, infertility is treated with either medication or surgery. However, recent improvements and innovations in medications such as microsurgery, and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) such as In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), make pregnancy possible. There are now more than 45, 000 babies that were born using IVF. In Vitro Fertilization is a fertility procedure which was first done successfully in 1978 in England by Dr. Robery Edwards, an embryologist and Dr. Patrick Steptoe, a gynecologist. Since then, the technology has been further advanced and developed by physicians and embryologists, with over 20,000 babies born worldwide. The possibility of a continuing pregnancy being achieved through IVF has improved from practically nothing to a one-time chance in 4 to 6 trials. IVF is usually used as an alternative fertilization method when the fallopian tubes of a woman are blocked. The procedure involves manually combining sperm and eggs from willing partners or donors inside a laboratory. Medications are given to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs. When the eggs are matured, the eggs are suctioned from the ovaries and placed in a laboratory culture dish with a man's sperm for fertilization. The dish is then placed in an incubator. Two to three days later, three to five embryos are transferred to the woman's uterus. Pregnancy can be confirmed using blood tests about 13 days after egg aspiration. It can also be confirmed by ultrasound 30 to 40 days after aspiration. The entire procedure is done approximately for three weeks. As with most medical procedures, there are some potential risks, the risks of IVF depend on each specific step of the procedure. As with most medical procedures, there are some potential risks. The risks of in vitro fertilization depend on each specific step of the procedure. Infertility is indeed of major concern on a lot of couples, especially among women who desperately want to bear their own child --- an act that is thought by many to be the ultimate expression of being a woman. Advances in science and technology, as best exemplified by In Vitro Fertilization, has brought hope and fulfillment to many couples around the world.
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Cecill Artates has sinced written about articles on various topics from Cure Anxiety, Health and Fitness. :Cecill Artates is a writer, athlete, and women's health advocate. She is also active in promoting sports and health among women and the youth in disadvantaged