The first time Marie Pearson saw her seven-week-old baby's heart beat, rising and falling on the ultrasound monitor, she couldn't stop sobbing. It's an exciting moment for any expectant mother, but for Marie, the new life represented the successful culmination of a three-year struggle.
After several attempts with intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization injections, expensive trips to reproductive specialists in the U.S., and trying Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture, 41-year-old Marie was finally pregnant with her second child.
"There's truly nothing like discovering you've conceived after so many disappointments and lost dreams. We're so blessed for our little miracle," says Marie, who lives in Calgary with her husband, Brian Bertsch, 41.
Marie, who decided to try to conceive again at the age of 38, is one of a growing number of women whose desire to have a baby later in life is challenged by a body that isn't as cooperative as it would have been in her 20s and early 30s. According to Health Canada, while 91 per cent of women are able to conceive at 30, the proportion drops to 77 per cent by 35 and to 53 per cent by age 40.
Increased risks after 40
If a woman 40 or older does conceive, she faces a greater chance of miscarriage. Dr. Karen Trewinnard, author of Fertility and Conception (Firefly, $24.95), says that one in five pregnancies end in miscarriage in women over 35. For women over 40, that figure rises to about one in two.
The decline in pregnancy for women over 40 has everything to do with eggs, says Dr. Clifford Librach, a Toronto-based infertility specialist and director and founder of the CReATe Fertility Centre, affiliated with the University of Toronto and Women's College Hospital. Women are born with about 400,000 ova, or eggs. During your fertile years, ovulation occurs monthly, as one of these eggs ripens in one of your ovaries and is then released into a Fallopian tube.
How it works (in case you missed sex ed class)
Just before you menstruate, increased amounts of estrogen stimulate the lining of the uterus to thicken to receive that released egg, should it be fertilized. Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) from the pituitary gland begins to reach the ovaries in increasing amounts, stimulating ovarian follicles to grow. After a few days, one follicle begins to dominate and grows into a fluid-filled sac containing the ovum. The ovum is then swept into the Fallopian tube, where it circulates in surrounding fluid, waiting to be fertilized. The ovum can survive in this fluid for 24 to 36 hours. If the egg isn't fertilized, the ovum dies and is shed during menstruation -- each year hundreds are lost.
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