There is often a false confidence in women who wait until their thirties to have
children. This can be seen in the survey results: 85 percent of respondents said that they were confident that they would be able to have children after 30 if they so chose. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. The biological facts are straightforward: every woman is born
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with a limited number of eggs and each year, and as she gets older, so do they. At the age of 30 a woman’s chance of getting pregnant begins decreasing, and by the time she reaches her forties, the chance of conception drops by five to ten percent a year (Kalb 2001). Some women are unaware of these statistics and are surprised that when they are finally ready to reproduce, their body is not. This can be extremely frustrating for the couple that finally feels ready to expand their family. During my interviews, a few couples I interviewed opened up and shared their frustrations on not being able to conceive right away.
Sarah: It’s funny too when you try to conceive and you are not
successful, I am kind of used to being successful at the things that I do. I didn’t realize that it was going to be hard work. It’s like, oh this didn’t work so I guess we can have a beer. We’ll try again next month honey.
Valerie: Now that we are trying, I was kind of surprised that after the first few months it didn’t happen, I was kind of like, oh this is going to be harder than I thought it was going to be and maybe we can’t have kids.
Sarah and Valerie were genuinely surprised that they had not conceived after months of trying. Both strong and successful women, it was frustrating to not get pregnant month after month. In their minds, since they were doing all of the things that they needed to do to get pregnant, they could not help but feel like in some way they were failing. They
discovered, painfully, that the dogged determination they used for earning their degrees and becoming successful in their careers would not work in trying to get pregnant. For the most part, it was just out of their control, which made them feel helpless. This unforeseen fertility roadblock forced both couples to acknowledge that they might not be able to conceive naturally.
Continuing the conversation, I asked both couples to reflect on what they thought it would feel like to be childless family. Sarah and Larry and Valerie and Louey, all were
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hesitantly optimistic that they would be able to get past the initial pain of not conceiving in order to make the most of a life without children.
Sarah: If we aren’t successful I don’t know if we would be totally unhappy if it didn’t happen. I think that we could have a lot of fun and have extra money. There are so many options. It is something I am interested in doing and want it to happen, but if it doesn’t happen I don’t think it will be the end of us or the end of the world.
Sarah tried to put a positive spin on a childless outcome, but there was definite hedging in the framing of her answer. She would not be “totally unhappy”, and she didn’t think it would be “the end” of them, but it is obvious through her word choices that having children is important and something she wanted to accomplish. Sensing that children did seem to be important to them, I asked if they had considered some other family planning options if in the end, the could not have children naturally.
Allyson: If you can’t have kids, will you try IVF or other options, like adoption?
Sarah: I don’t know. We haven’t really thought about it.
Larry: We haven’t really talked about it. We haven’t really really tried so…
I was surprised by these responses. As Sarah is one of the older participants at 39, it was interesting to learn that they had not discussed what other options they might contemplate if they could not have children. Due to the sensitivity of the subject, it could be a discussion they were holding off on having until they felt it was absolutely necessary to undertake, or at least until they had done the made concerted efforts in trying to conceive. Despite her age, at this point they still felt optimistic that they would be able to have children naturally. I also asked Valerie and Louey to reflect on what life would be like without kids.
Louey: Initially if you want something and can’t do it it’s hard, but I think we could get over it eventually. I don’t think we would adopt kids
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Valerie: I don’t know. I think we would have to wait it out to see if the urge is still there. I think we would have enough connections with people who have children, but I don’t know…
Allyson: Do you think that you would use all the new medical technologies to have a child of your own?
Louey: Hmm…I don’t know. We haven’t really thought about it.
There was also some hesitation in both Louey’s and Valerie’s responses: he thinks they could get over it eventually; and she was unsure about what it would mean for their life narrative. Clearly, the thought of not actually being able to have children was something they had not dwelled on, at least out loud. Another explanation is that it was something they did not feel comfortable discussing with me. Unsurprisingly then, they too had not had any serious discussions about using medical technologies, but believed that it was a bit premature to consider adoption as a serious solution at this point. As a potential coping technique, Valerie did think there might be some hope in filling any emptiness by being involved in the lives of friends and family members who did have children, but at this point it was really hard to say if that would be enough for them or not.
Although somewhat dispirited, Sarah and Larry, and Valerie and Louey are still pretty positive about their chances of conceiving naturally because they both had only been trying for a few months. Another couple, Betty and Steve have been trying to have children for two years and are losing faith that they will be able to conceive without some kind of outside intervention.
Allyson: How long have you been trying for?
Steve: Two years…
Allyson: What lengths do you think you all will go to have children? There is so much technology out there now, like IVF and surrogacy, and so on and so on.
Betty: We have talked about it, but it really comes down to money.
Steve: Yeah, it was like between five to 10,000 dollars.
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happens. I know I have a little while left. But I am just like, you know, you feel inept. It is a really bothersome feeling.
After two years and countless physical tests later, Betty and Steve, unlike the other couples, are having serious discussions about other options for having children. Knowing they really want to have children, they have spent considerable time weighing the pros and negatives of the various choices and as of yet, are not sold on a real solution for broadening their family.
Infertility treatments do not seem like a realistic option for them as they both only earn a teacher’s salary. To put it into perspective, donor sperm costs anywhere from $300 to almost $3,000 (Spar 2006:xvi). As a more intensive production and retrieval process, a couple who needs viable eggs to produce their offspring will pay anywhere from $2,500 for an “average” woman’s egg to $50,000 for an egg with what is claimed to be optimal genetic material (Spar 2006:x). These child-creating costs are amplified when incorporating the full IVF treatment, which can cost between $69,000 to $85,000 (Spar 229). After investing these large amounts of money, there is no guarantee that the procedures will work. In 2008, 18 percent of women who used ART were not able to carry the pregnancy to completion (CDC 2010). It is understandable that Betty and Steve do not see this as an option they would choose easily.
For now Betty and Steve have opted to try some alternative holistic therapies like acupuncture to try to help with conception. Betty commented, “I am trying other sorts of interventions to help my body to get back in balance,” explaining why she had a row of tiny needles in her ear when she greeted me at the door for the interview. Steve also pointed out that he was encouraging her to take it easy at work, as she has the predisposition to
overextend herself in school activities, causing her great stress, which they both thought could be the root of the infertility.
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I found it very interesting that their focus was on “fixing” her so that they could have children, especially when after asking if Steve had any testing done, they shared he had not. At one point he had tried to get some blood work done, but due to an insurance mix up, he never got the results. At the time of our conversation, he had not followed up to see if the issue was on his end rather than hers. Betty and Steve are not alone in their reproductive barriers. Many other couples eventually are forced into looking at other options for creating the family of their dreams due to age-related infertility, otherwise known as ARI.