Too old for IVF? Oldest mother, 72, dying leaving behind 18-month daughter

@Tee I am not sure… she had a stroke…. was on lots of bed rest before she gave birth and the baby was born 1 month early.It’s just very sad…

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@Everyone with good wishes – thanks very much!

@Wayne: with most publicly-funded and supported agencies nowadays (including those who work with the state), the emphasis nowadays is on helping birth moms through the process. So, instead of having them fill out a lot of paperwork, letting them have the baby and then just give it away to someone they don’t know, these days the birth moms are part of the matching process.

My husband and I filled out a lot of paperwork, wrote our autobiographies, and then made a scrapbook that shows our lives. Whenever a prospective birth mom talks to social workers at our agency, they look at a few scrapbooks of available parents, and if anyone looks promising, the social workers arrange for a meeting (if the birth mom wants one). That way, the birth mom gets to feel like she’s in control of the process, and not a bit player. If the birth mom likes the prospective parents, then things move forward from there.

It’s a long process, and so far, no one has picked us for a meeting. :( We could have gone the private adoption route, but it’s expensive (around $30,000+). We also looked at international avenues, but they can be pricey, and we thought that the domestic route was best for us. Our agency adoption will cost us around $15,000 when all is said and done.

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@Penny Bee: Thanks for the explanation. I know it’s a bit off-topic, so I’ll try to be brief. Our experience was a bit different – same with the autobiography, but no meeting of parents (State, Department of Children and Families) as they may/may not be in the picture. We were able to go to MARE (google it) and see prospective kids and also go to, for lack of a better term, parties, to meet the kids too. No costs, except for time.

We were told to go the foster route first, but we opted not to do that. That felt a little to strange!

Okay, on topic. Sorry, cultural mores or not, I think 72 is a bit old for having a child. If it was a cultural thing, why didn’t she do it a long time ago?

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JATL, where did I say it needed to continue? And I clearly DID say in my earliest post that the woman’s actions were selfish, as she was virtually guaranteeing that her child would be orphaned before reaching adulthood. My point, which I stand by, is that most of the responses failed entirely to take into account cultural differences and religious pressures that are unimaginable to western readers. Unless, of course, you educate yourself.

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1. “I feel like a grandma at nearly 40.” Well, sure, some dads and moms are too old and tired to have babies at 39. (Conversely, some moms and dads may be too immature to have babies at 24, or 30, or 39, for that matter.) But many dads and moms are just fine having babies in their late 30s or 40s. The average age at which a woman had her last baby before 1900 was age 42, and these were women who may have already had 8 or 10 or 12 pregnancies and dangerous (and unmedicated) births. (Talk about tiring!) Also, in India and China (and in some subcultures in America), the actual grandmother is in fact raising the babies and kids while the mom goes to work outside the home. So obviously, there are many parents worldwide who seem capable of raising children while in their 40s and 50s.

If you personally don’t have the strength or endurance (or just the desire), that’s fine, but please don’t make assumption that other potential parents are like you.

2. I was pregnant at age 35 and at age 41. The second pregnancy, birth, and recovery were much, much easier than the first. There are a lot of reasons for this, and my experience isn’t necessarily typical, but FWIW.

3. “[The older siblings] are 13 and 16 and probably won’t be excited.” Again, every family is different. My kids are 12 and 6 (I am 48) and they would love love love to have a little sister or brother. (Unfortunately for them, their dad and I have NO such plans.)

4. Re generational gaps: My parents were 24 and 25 when I was born. I felt very much of a generation gap between them and me, probably because of their personalities and possibly because they came of age pre-”60s”. My husband and I were in our late 30s when our older daughter was born. Surely there’s still time to go, but at age 12, she seems not to feel the same degree of estrangement from her parents as I felt from mine – we talk about everything, everything. Perhaps because we’re flexible, open-minded, good at listening to her, and neither she nor we are the kind to just go along with the crowd.

5. “I’d cut it off at age 45. After 35 is considered advanced maternal age and doubles your risk of Down’s Syndrome (and twins too I believe). At age 45, the risk is 1/30.” If you didn’t know anything about the topic, you might think that the writer quoting statistics sounds knowledgeable. But actually, this argument makes no sense. NO women can get pregnant with her own eggs at 60 or 70. The women who are doing IVF at this age are using the eggs of younger women, and their chances of of having a Down Syndrome baby depend solely on the age of their egg donor (and, to a smaller degree, on the age of the husband or sperm donor). Also, who is anyone else to say that a baby with Down Syndrome has a life not worth living? Because that’s the implication in saying you’d “cut off” a woman’s right to get (or stay?) pregnant at age 45. Finally, as to the risk of twins: older women do have a slightly larger chance of having twins when they get pregnant naturally. But the risk of twins in IVF is largely based on how many embryos you put back, not on the your age. All IVF attempts at pregnancy create a higher risk of twins and high-order multiples. That seems to be a risk that many women (including women in their 20s, of course) are willing to take in order to have a baby.

6. Re the woman mom who died when she was 39, and her friend who will “close up shop” if she isn’t pregnant by 35. Death at age 39 isn’t very common. Yes, many of us have anecdotes. My husband’s mother died of cancer when he was 5. She had had him (her 4th child) when she was 32. So … no one should have a baby after 30, then, since one woman died of cancer at age 37? In reality, what is called “high risk” depends on (a) what the medical profession sees as typical (in the 1950s, it wasn’t typical to have a baby in your 40s), (b) the state of medical technology, and (c) an arbitrary cutoff line. I’d wager that even a 65-year-old having a baby nowadays (with good medical care) is safer than a 25-year-old having a baby in the 17th century, when the maternal death rate in childbirth was 1 in 6. And certainly, an American woman having a baby at 39 is at far, far, far, far, far, far lower risk than the healthiest woman having a baby in her mid-20s in prior centuries. High risk is all relative.

7. For anyone pregnant at around age 40: be aware that the miscarriage rate for a 41-year-old woman pregnant with her own eggs is 50%.

6. If you are over 35 and really really want to have a baby with your own eggs (or you really really want a baby and can’t afford $60,000 for IVF and donor eggs), then get thee to a fertility clinic for basic testing after 4-6 months of trying to conceive. Do not waste time. Your age is the most important factor in your likelihood of getting pregnant, whether naturally, by lower tech fertility treatments, or by IVF. Do not squander your time.

8. For those who blithely keep telling everyone to adopt: I don’t know of any adoption agencies that allow 65-year-old women to adopt. At age 47 or 50, you will find far fewer avenues to adopt, especially if you don’t have a lot of money. Yes, you might be able to adopt a child with special needs, but if the argument is that women are too old and tired to have children at that age, then why would we assume that they’d be young and energetic enough to take on the more draining task of raising a child with special needs?

9. “The 72 year old is just selfish. They should of thought of having kids at an earlier age…” Did it ever occur to you that perhaps they could not have kids at an earlier age? Perhaps she had blocked tubes, or he had low sperm count (the first problem can be overcome with IVF; the second one sometimes can be overcome with IVF). Again, the assumptions people make….

10. Nevertheless, from a moral standpoint, I believe that getting pregnant, OR getting someone else pregnant, when you are 65 or 70 and will likely not be able to raise your child to adulthood is wrong, and doctors should have the absolute right to decline to help that happen. (OTOH, the government shouldn’t get into this. When you’re willing to require vasectomies for sexually active 65-year-old men, then I’m willing to discuss legal bans on 65-year-old women getting pregnant.)

11. Penny Bee – best, best of luck to you. If you want to find parents your age, you just to look around for the right crowd. Having babies in your late 30s or 40s (whether through childbirth or adoption) is pretty common nowadays, esp among well-educated women. My younger daughter was born when I just shy of 42, and there are at least 3 moms of kids in her kindergarten class who are older than me. (I have lots of younger mom friends too. One is silver and the other is gold!)

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@Penny Bee – Having gotten pregnant at 44 and had my child at 45, I was quite surprised at how many Moms in our play group are in their late 30’s, early 40’s – at least one 3rd of the members. You will easily find lots of moms close to your age these days.

@Laurie – you mention $60,000 for IVF and donor eggs. I’m not sure where that figure comes from, but perhaps you are referring to IVF with the person’s own eggs, with many IVF attempts. The cost of IVF with donor eggs is typically less than half that, between 20,000 to 30,000. With donor eggs, the success rate is very high in the 1st or 2nd attempt. You do not pay the same price with each attempt, as you are typically using the same donor egg pool. So, even with more than one attempt, the cost is not typically over 30,000 in the U.S.. The cost is similar to private adoption costs.

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