From YourTango
More and more often, women ages forty-plus are enlisting me to assist them in their quest to find a husband, which is just fine and dandy, except for one little snag. They want to have children. I have no idea what they were doing for the last twenty-some-odd years, but often, single women in their 40s have the idea that they still have all the time in the world to settle down and get pregnant.
Unfortunately, my male clients that want a family are generally not open to meeting a woman over thirty-three — especially if they want more than one child. It is understandable that women are waiting longer to have children; after all, many are building careers and enjoying the freedom to travel, pursue friendships and cultivate personal passions. But many women are also in for quite a shock when they come to the realization that they waited too long, and that their eggs are all but dried up.
Many women are under the assumption that just because they are still ovulating, they are fertile. An article on the website The Telegraph states that scientists have discovered the reason why women find it difficult to conceive later in life is “because they have used up 90 percent of their ‘ovarian reserve’ by the age of 30, and while they may continue to produce eggs throughout their 30s and 40s, the reservoir of potential eggs from which they are taken has shrunk to almost nothing.”
Hollywood reinforces the idea that women can conceive easily well into their forties; we constantly hear about celebrities that are getting pregnant and giving birth, as late as their early 50s. But what the media fails to explain is that these celebs are most likely using another woman’s eggs! When I bring up the subject of fertility to a forty-plus single woman who has asked me to match her to a man that wants children, her response often goes something like this: “Oh, I am in excellent health, and I look so much younger than my age. I know I am forty-one, but everyone thinks that I’m in my early thirties. I am sure that I am extremely fertile.”
The reality is that the amount and the quality of a woman’s eggs has absolutely nothing to do with how young she (thinks) she looks, or how fit or healthy she is. Because a woman is born with all of the eggs that she will have in her lifetime, the older she gets the fewer eggs she has left. And the eggs that are left are often not viable.
Read more at YourTango.com
