Archive for the ‘Egg Donation’ Category
It’s Confirmed: 40 Really is the New 30! Except . . . Wait . . . Watch Out For the NOvary
September 23, 2010 | By: Elizabeth
Most people who know me, know that I am in my mid-early 40’s. Turning 40 wasn’t a big deal for me. I have such a baby face that sometimes I have a hard time getting people to take me seriously. Turning 40 for me was a milestone of maturity I had long waited for. You have to take a woman in her 40’s seriously. If for no other reason than you’ve got the mileage to deserve it. And yes, thanks to amazing strides in modern medicine (not to mention Botox® and Viagra®), people are living longer and are taking the time to enjoy their life; people are doing things later in life and enjoying them with the vigor and spirit of someone fifteen to twenties years younger. No longer are we rushing ala “Mad Men” into marriage and childbearing in our 20’s. Women are taking the time to establish themselves and find the right mate. Forty has thus become to the former Twenty-Somethings, what 30 was to our parents’ generation.
There is a lot more fun to be had and work to be accomplished, praise to be garnished and shopping for hot “Jeggings” (well maybe not for me) to be done in one’s 40’s. The “not your mom’s kind of jeans” have given way to a new look for those of us who are fabulous and 40: long hair and tight jeans are acceptable on a 40 year old woman’s body. No longer are these considered unacceptable for a woman of a “certain age”! No longer does turning 40 qualify you as a “woman of a certain age” and for that matter, neither does turning 50!! As a dear friend of mine recently turned 40 and all her friends gave her a shout-out on Facebook (and yes, someone not yet 40 begged my friend to confirm that 40 is the new 30), it was generally considered among her already 40 friends that turning 40 was a cause for celebration. So yes, my friends, your 40’s are a decade to be embraced and not dreaded.
Except for one small, “eensy weensy” factor of which no woman should ignore and most women to my surprise are unaware of . . . have you met
The NOvary?
Who or What is the NOvary? Well, let me fill you in! The NOvary is the any-woman’s ovary who has decided not to cooperate with her plans to become a mother. The NOvary does not care if you’re 30, 35 or 40. She can and does reside in all women of all ages. However, she tends to emerge with more Attitude at or around the time you turn 35. And by the time you turn 40, the NOvary has almost universally decided to take over your reproductive system and your Plan. The NOvary defies what medical science and a good cosmetic dermatologist have allowed us to enjoy — another decade of productivity and passion for all things, most especially those career, clothing or relationship related. Because let’s face it, not every woman is ready to, or wants to have a child, in her 30’s. Indeed, we have been taught to wait and enjoy, and to relish life! And we should!! But then as we turn 40 and we’ve lined all our nice little ducks in a row, or decided we don’t need our ducks to be in a row, and we consider parenting, we come face to face with the not-so-new but seemingly unknown nemesis to pregnancy and motherhood:
The NOvary.
The NOvary is the Ovary that says NO to all your carefully defined and created plans. In the world of fertility, or rather infertility, 40 is from the reproductive endocrinologist’s standpoint, the death of your childbearing years. The NOvary has not run a slick social media champagne – in fact it’s quite the opposite – she has been enjoying our ride along with us all the while knowing her little secret, and enjoying her secret power. The NOvary is the Ovary that no longer makes healthy eggs and she is so stealthy and sophisticated that you can actually conceive on your own for a few years as she gains her power and comes into her prime. But even though she hasn’t hit her full capabilities to destroy your dreams (or so you think) her influence over the eggs she releases on your behalf will cause you to miscarry, and miscarry again. Lulled into a false sense of security that your eggs are working because you are getting pregnant, she continues to work her evil spell, pushing you farther and farther into her control.
So powerful is the NOvary that she can continue to elude you into believing that you are still fertile even though you’re 40. So powerful is the NOvary that she can fool even the smartest of reproductive endocrinologists who will look at all your Day-3 data, manage to retrieve some very “healthy” looking eggs from your ovaries, only to find that those fertilized eggs and “beautiful” preembryos don’t turn into the baby you are longing for. The NOvary can place the cleverest of masks on eggs that are on the verge of retiring, and making them look as fabulous as you do in your 40 something glory. But the NOvary knows: your eggs have long since passed their expiration date.
How do I know this? How did I meet the dreaded and feared NOvary? Over hundreds (and I unfortunately mean hundreds) of my clients have battled her, failed to defeat her, and then faced the reality that (whether they are Thirty-Somethings or Forty-Somethings, married, career in place, or otherwise just determined to become a mom), if they want to realize their dreams of becoming pregnant and having a baby that they would need to bypass the NOvary altogether.
Yes, we can defeat the NOvary. You still have options and a powerful weapon to defeat the NOvary; one of those options is donor eggs and your success rate using donor eggs is about 50 to 60 times higher (perhaps more than that) than your chances are of defeating the NOvary. Yes, you read that correctly, success rates for using donor eggs are (at some fertility clinics) close to a 60% live birth rate!
Just as medical science has preserved your beauty and created a body that does not look, act or feel anywhere near 40, it has created a technology that can put the NOvary out of business! But be warned, while 40 is truly the new 30 . . . the NOvary has no intention of catching up with the rest of us, and if you want to have a baby and you haven’t yet decided to TTC or the TTCing isn’t going anywhere, consider the fact that she may be up to her devilish deeds.
Celebrate your age and enjoy your life . . . but please don’t forget she’s out there . . . looming in the shadows and finding new ways to avoid detection by physicians and scientists alike . . . and her name is the NOvary!
Liz
p.s. up next, another option for defeating the NOvary . . . stay tuned!
Filed under: Age and Infertility, Egg Donation, IVF, The Journey to Parenthood, Thinking Out Loud, Third-Party Assisted Reproduction, Treatment
Tags: biological clock, Egg Donation, Facebook, IVF, miscarriage, premature ovarian failure
Why does Jennifer Aniston’s quest to be a mother inspire me so?
August 19, 2010 | By: Elizabeth
Everyone knows that I am fan of Jennifer’s. I actually probably wouldn’t be married to my DH if it wasn’t for some advice her mom gave me a long time ago. But seriously, Jennifer is an extraordinary woman in all respects, and from my perspective even more so for the way she is approaching her quest to be a mom.
At 41, most of know that Jennifer is likely to be facing some fertility issues (although with her health conscious lifestyle and yoga-bod maybe she’s found the way to turn back time, she sure looks it anyway!). While most of us would be doing a little freak-out dance now, and panicking about the ticking time bomb that are our ovaries, Ms. Aniston seems anything but panicked. In fact, she seems rather Zen about it all. And that is exactly my point and what inspires me.
First, the woman KNOWS she is going to be a mom. One way or another the woman has total and complete faith that she will become a mom. Rather than spiraling into depression (as I did and many of us do), Jennifer has seemed to have found a way to let go and TRUST. This is, I think, the gateway to success.
I really truly believe that it is when you completely accept and embrace the concept that you will be a mother, no matter what and no matter how (IUI, IVF, IVF donor egg, gestational surrogacy, adoption, whatever is your path), that fertility treatments have the highest success rates. Study after study shows that the mind-body connection cannot and should not be ignored. Women who are able to be in the place that Jennifer Aniston seems to be in, are the women who are more likely to succeed with fertility treatments. It’s fact not fiction. I know — as does JA — that she’s got an edge on success that I wish more of my friends and clients had: The inner-knowingness of the inevitability of their impending state of motherhood.
Another thing that I think sets her apart from many of us (and I include myself in this group when I was in the first 4 or 5 years of treatment), is that by all media accounts, she seems fairly open to many different paths to parenthood. I am not privy to her conversations with her BFF’s but I am guessing that there isn’t much she isn’t considering about how she’s going to become a mom. That too puts her on the fast track to “mommydom”. Not all of us can be as enlightened and confident as she is, and I am not saying that she doesn’t have her moments of . . . doubt . . . but I really think that the confidence and openness that Jennifer Aniston is talking about whenever she is interviewed about becoming a mom is something that tells me it ain’t gonna be long before she’s announcing the arrival or the impending arrival of a little baby Aniston.
And for what its worth, I think she’s a fantastic role model for every woman, single or married, over the age of 35 who’s trying to become a mom.
ASSUME IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN, AND IT WILL.
p.s. and when you can’t totally assume it will happen, fake it, fake it until you make-it . . . because that’s another sure fire way to get your mommy-Zen fire burning.
Filed under: Current Affairs, Egg Donation, Faith and Infertility, In the News, Infertility In The Movies etc., Peace to Parenthood, Personal Musings, The Journey to Parenthood, Thinking Out Loud, Uncategorized, visualization
Tags: actresses, adoption, biological clock, Egg Donation, hollywood, hope, infertility, Inspiration, intent, movies, Peace to Parenthood, visualization
Law and Order Disappoints by Getting the Law WRONG on egg donation and the law as it pertains to same sex couples in NY!
May 13, 2010 | By: Elizabeth
I rarely watch television anymore. I am lucky if I get time late at night to watch something and then I usually elect to watch a re-run of The West Wing. However, the other night DH and I decided to stay up late and watch some television and he put on one of my favorite shows, Law and Order. This episode may have been a re-run but I am not certain; we were watching it on NBC during it’s regular time slot 10-11 pm ET. We only caught the last half hour, the part that always deals with the trial. This fact pattern was very convoluted and revolved around a conspiracy by a doctor and a family to cause someone’s death of cancer at a certain time so that specific amounts of money would pass to certain descendants and not to other people or organizations (I didn’t catch the fact pattern well and it was really intricate). Had the guy died of cancer on his own before some date the defendant and her partner would have inherited ten million dollars.
In the story, the prosecutor decided to use the fact that one of the defendants (who was a daughter of the guy who died and who was supposed to inherit ten million dollars) had conceived a child with her lesbian partner using an egg donor (at least I think it was an egg donor, it could have been that the defendant female partner had donated her eggs to her lesbian partner so that her partner could carry the baby for them to raise together . . . however, the prosecutor kept using the term “egg donor” so I assumed that the couple had used an egg donor and were planning on raising the baby together). To further complicate matters, the lesbian couple had entered into an adoption whereby one partner had adopted the other so that they could obtain insurance together etc. and more relevant to the Law and Order story line, to inherit money together.
The prosecutor wanted to use the fact that the baby, because it was conceived via an egg donor, was not really their child (biological or otherwise) to cut off any inheritance rights the baby might have to the ten million dollars, and thus deny the defendant her right to benefit from the baby inheriting the money.
This had to be a recent episode of Law and Order as the prosecutor is someone new, and Sam Waterston (sp?) is now the District Attorney or is in a more senior role and not trying cases. The law as it pertains to same sex couples in NY has been pretty well established for several years. Adopting an adult for purposes of a establishing a legal relationship between same sex partners is extremely difficult to do, and I believe there are and have been enough other laws that protect or recognize same sex marriages in NY that the adoption aspect of the story line was just plain stupid and offensive (if not legally wrong)! I don’t believe that one adult can adopt another adult. But . . .
Second and more to the point. Law and Order got the law wrong on egg donation!!!!!!!!!!!
Let’s assume first that it was a true egg donation whereby this couple used an egg donor to conceive a child they would parent together (and not that one partner was donating her egg to the other for purposes of conception). In NY, although there is no statute, there is a case that specifically states that woman who gives birth to a child or children conceived via egg donation is the legal and natural mother of that child or children. McDonald v. McDonald, 196 A.D.2d 7, 12, 608 N.Y.S.2d 477 (App. Div. 2d Dep’t 1994) (finding woman who gave birth to child conceived through egg donation to be “the natural mother of the children. . . .”). Indeed, this case and a long line of other cases in NY deal with the presumption that a woman who gives birth to a child in NY is the legal and natural mother of that child.
Law and Order usually has lawyers that check the facts and the law on its episodes. I am absolutely dumbfounded that they got this so wrong. Regardless of whether one member of this partnership donated an egg to her partner or whether they used an egg donor, that baby was the legal child of the woman who was going to give birth to it. Assuming the two members of this partnership had a legal relationship that could be recognized in NY (and maybe I am wrong on the adoption thing, but it seems that in 2010 it is easier to go to MA or Canada and get married than to try and adopt an adult (???) to create a legal union), that baby was a baby of their partnership and their love for one another, and if the baby was delivered in New York City or any of the five boroughs and they were legally married, then both of their names would go on the birth certificate.
This manipulative and legally inaccurate representation of same sex partnership laws, same sex parentage laws, and egg donation is staggeringly offensive and WRONG. Where were Law and Order’s lawyers in this? Do they no longer check that their story lines are factually and legally correct? And if they have lawyers, may I take a guess that their lawyers are 80 year old homophobic men and that the show’s writers must have been on acid when they wrote this episode.
I am anxious to watch a re-run of this show and figure out what the facts were, and to determine just how wrong Law and Order got the law and order of reproductive law.
Filed under: adoption, Egg Donation, Infertility on Television, Same Sex Parenting and Reproductive Law, Thinking Out Loud
Tags: adoption, Egg Donation, hollywood, Law and Order, same sex parenting, television
