IVF babble reader Jemima shares her thoughts….
The term biological clock is just awful isn’t it, especially for those of us who are struggling to conceive
As each month passes, then as each year passes, we become even more aware of the speed of time and the urgency for treatment to actually work. What we don’t need is an ugly expression like “biological clock” to remind us that we are behind schedule!! What we don’t need is the analogy of a big looming clock, ticking loudly over us, to remind us that TIME IS RUNNING OUT!
I think we can all agree that if we could go back in time, we would have been more aware of our fertility and its fragility. It’s all very well reading about the fact that your eggs are in their prime in your 20’s, but what good is that to me, a middle aged (are we calling mid thirties middle aged?) woman who is on her second round of IVF?
Anyway, I thought it was just us women who were being “time” shamed, but it turns out it is the blokes too. Now they are being told too, that actually, it would have been way better if they had started a family in their 20’s or early thirties.
I read an interview recently with Professor Suks Minhas, a consultant urologist and andrologist at Imperial College London, who said “a man is best suited to becoming a father in his ‘late 20s or early 30s”. He said a simple semen test can be arranged by a man’s GP surgery while talking in an exclusive interview with the Daily Express.
Well thank you Professor but this info is 15 years too late for us
He said that while men produce sperm their whole life, the quality of that sperm will decline once a man reaches his 40th birthday. (unless of course you are Ronnie Wood from The Rolling Stones who kept producing children up in to the age of 68!)
As I read the article, I wondered if I should tell my husband, so that he could share some of the “time shaming”, but as I looked at the words, I thought to myself, what good is this going to do. Having been diagnosed with “lazy sperm”, should I now make my husband feel even more crap than he already does? No. So instead, I decided to browse the internet for a mini break instead.
There is nothing I can do to reverse time. I just have to plough on, desperately finding ways to pay for another round of IVF that may or may not work due to lazy sperm and low AMH.
I do understand that it is important for younger people to understand how precious fertility is and how time really is of the essence, but I just can’t help but feel heartbroken when I read quotes like that.
What I will do though, is make sure that when I do finally become a mother (and I know I will!!!!) I will tell my children to think about their future. I want them to travel, and I want them to have great careers, but I also never want them to experience the heartache that me and my husband have been through as we have struggled to conceive.
I will encourage them to have a fertility MOT early on, and to perhaps think about fertility preservation – something absolutely nobody was talking about when I was in my 20s.
I often hear IVF babble talk about #fertilityhindsight. I suppose mine would be to tell people to never assume you are going to be able to conceive naturally. Get yourself checked out in your twenties! If tests show that you have “issues”, you won’t be up against that horrible biological clock to sort things out!
Sending love
Jemima
Male fertility is the cause in nearly half of cases. So why do men feel so ashamed?
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