Society norms have changed immensely over the decades. For women, their wish is not like ‘grandma’s’ which was to get married and have kids early. Instead, women want to further their education, build careers and then many years later, change gears to incorporate into their busy, professional, powerful lifestyles, the patter of little feet.

The medical challenge comes however with the fact that for women, who are born with all of their eggs, time matters. As women age their eggs become less in number and far less in quality. It’s not to say that there are no eggs or no chance, but while the woman is possibly far, far better able to personally be a mother, to cope and provide, the capability of the eggs is sadly lacking. And even more frustratingly, this may be despite countless hours of looking after herself – working out in the gym, eating healthy salads (until they came out of her ears), and not smoking or drinking!

Even using In-Vitro Fertilization the odds of achieving a healthy ongoing pregnancy at 45 are very poor (less than 5%). The choices then become 1) attempting IVF with her own eggs despite these chances 2) considering an egg donation option, or 3) adoption.

Egg donation is used frequently for a woman who wishes to have a family at age 45 plus. Using this method of IVF, eggs are obtained from stimulating a younger woman, typically age 18-35, allowing younger better quality eggs to be fertilized with the male partner’s sperm (or donor sperm). This will result in far more and better quality embryos, than if the woman used her own eggs at age 45 and over.

These donor egg embryos have a very high chance of resulting in a successful pregnancy and a much lower chance that there would be complications such as miscarriage or chromosomal abnormalities. In essence, a very high chance of achieving that dream of a healthy baby.