Information is Control

In 2003, Australian television journalist Virginia Haussegger caused a national media firestorm by penning an op-ed dripping with grief and rage that she’d missed the boat on having children without realising it. She lamented her “naive” belief that she could have it all. By the time she sought help in her late thirties her GP told her, in her words, “you’re stuffed”.

And while her anger has long since passed, the issue remains omnipresent for women grappling with the balance of climbing the professional ladder and having children. For many like Haussegger, delaying motherhood is not so much a choice but a matter of circumstance, as fertility specialist with Melbourne IVF, Dr Kokum Jayasinghe, explains.

“The most common reason I hear from my patients is that they haven’t found a suitable partner,” she says. “The word suitable is crucial here because women still want to hold on to their standards. They are looking for someone that’s worth having a family with.

“Other reasons would be their career aspirations, they have goals they’d like to achieve at work. And sometimes I’ll have couples coming to me and saying, ‘we’ve been married for years and we do want to have children but not quite yet’,” Dr Jayasinghe says.

The only trouble with this is that the older women get, the more difficult it is for them to conceive. This is common knowledge these days but what isn’t widely known, is what women can do about it.

Let’s start with the good news. Compared to previous generations, women are healthier than ever which can help considerably when trying to conceive. But in terms of the number and quality of our eggs – which is critical to our fertility – it has little impact. Here’s Dr Jayasinghe again. “Everyone is unique and individual and women need to know their own bodies in order to make informed choices for the future.”

“The current, younger generation of women are taking control of their health, they eat well, they exercise and they’re not smokers. Some people believe that automatically applies to the viability of the eggs as well. Unfortunately, human biology is not like that, and our egg numbers and their quality naturally decline as we age”.

Dr Jayasinghe says there’s a steep drop off in fertility around the age of 35, after which women typically find it considerably more difficult to fall pregnant. In short, we’re born with a limited supply of eggs and there’s little we can do to stop the gradual decline – in both quality and quantity – as we age.

But, not all egg supplies are created equal. And there are things we can do to increase our odds.

“The first thing is to check what their egg reserve is as everyone is unique.”

Some women have more eggs in their ‘ovarian reserve’ than others, which gives them an increased chance at conceiving. Also impacting a woman’s fertility is the number of eggs she releases from that reserve when she’s ovulating.

The number of eggs both in storage and released each month is unique to every woman, which explains why women of the same age can have vastly different experiences when trying to become pregnant.

“This is why I recommend women see a fertility specialist who can assess their individual situation,” Dr Jayasinghe says. “The first thing is to check what their egg reserve is as everyone is unique and individual and women need to know their own bodies in order to make informed choices for the future.”

This can be done via two tests; a blood test and an ultrasound. The tests are simple enough and the insights they provide play a crucial role for women wanting to take charge of their fertility.

Understanding your own fertility is critical to preserving it. It enables women to make  educated decisions about motherhood, be that to bring it forward or take steps to freeze their eggs for a more suitable time. Dr Kokum says she’s seen a significant rise in the number of women doing this.

“We saw a massive jump in egg freezing during COVID lockdowns, around 30 percent.” She said that while “we do not have any control over how rapidly we use our egg pool” women can take proactive steps to set aside some of those eggs for later.

“Starting a family as early as possible is a good idea but that is not practical for every single woman,” Dr Jayasinghe said. “And if that is the case, rather than trying to hurry and start a family – doing it with the wrong person or at the wrong time – women have the opportunity to make plans for the future. They can elect to freeze some eggs – egg freezing isn’t a guarantee of a baby, but it does give more options to try for a baby later on in life.”