Have kids? Sure ... someday

Jacqueline Stenson Contributing editor • Profile • E-mail

Susan Laurent never thought she’d have trouble getting pregnant when she was ready, so she pursued her career, traveled and generally just enjoyed life.

“All along I thought I still had plenty of time,” says Laurent, 39, of Lyons, Colo., who works as a marketing vice president. “I’m healthy, active, don’t smoke, live in a great, low-stress part of the country, so I had no idea that simply waiting could possibly lead to difficulties in getting pregnant. I figured that 40 was too old for sure — with a higher risk of Down syndrome, et cetera — but I didn’t think that 36 could be too old as well.”

Like many women, Laurent had heard about Hollywood’s leading ladies such as Geena Davis and Jane Seymour, and other women, having kids well into their 40s and beyond, so she figured there was no hurry. But all the while, her biological clock was ticking away.

“I waited, but when the time came that my husband and I wanted to have kids, we were shocked to find out that we had to see a fertility specialist,” she says. “You think you’re safe in waiting, but myself and many of my friends who waited are now paying the price — emotionally and financially.”

Thanks to fertility drugs and intrauterine insemination, Laurent gave birth to her son, Conor, last summer, and she’s now trying for another child. But plenty of women who wait too long to take a “pregnant pause” from their careers — and all-around business as usual — aren’t so lucky.

Women have long been wrestling with how to balance work and family planning, and delaying having babies to build their careers or even those of their husbands. Statistics show that as more women have entered the workforce since the mid-1970s, the percentage of first births to women ages 30 and up have increased fourfold, according to the American Fertility Association (AFA), a patient and advocacy group. But fertility experts say there are some surprising other reasons why couples wait too long to try to start their families.

What's the rush?
Ironically, fertility treatments — their success and widespread availability over the last decade — seem to have lulled women like Laurent, and even their partners, into complacency. Many people know somebody who’s been on fertility drugs or undergone in vitro fertilization (IVF). Or they’ve heard about women having babies later in life, so they figure, what’s the rush?

But they don’t always hear that those movie stars or other newsmakers had to use IVF, another woman’s eggs and spend tens of thousands of dollars to have a baby, says Pamela Madsen, founder and executive director of the AFA.

Interactive Baby-making by the numbers: Stats on women in the workplace, the rate of assisted reproduction, numbers of twins and triplets, and much more.

Case in point: Frieda Birnbaum, the 60-year-old New Jersey woman who gave birth to twins in May. News reports discussed her use of IVF, notes Madsen, but nothing about the need for donor eggs or embryos, even though experts say it's highly unlikely that Birnbaum conceived with her own eggs.

“I think that people do misinterpret the stories they hear in the media and they think, ‘Oh, that woman just had a really good doctor,’” Madsen says.

What's more, Birnbaum went on NBC's “TODAY” show and said it was her “mission” to help other women — and even “empower” them to be able to have more choices about their fertility.

Problem is that women may not realize that these stories make the news because they're the exception, not the norm, says Dr. Marcelle Cedars, director of reproductive endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco. And trying to have a baby this way can come at an enormous financial and emotional toll.

Just one round of IVF costs an average of $12,400 — generally not covered by insurance — and women may need several rounds to conceive, especially the older they get. Whereas 37 percent of IVF cycles with a woman's own eggs result in a live birth for women 35 and under, that figure drops to about 11 percent for women ages 41 and 42. IVF simply may never work for some older women.

Another factor that experts worry will fuel complacency is egg-freezing, one of the most recent fertility developments. It promises to let women bank their eggs for use years down the line. While the technology is encouraging, it's still in its infancy and offers no guarantees. Still, fertility experts say, more and more women are pursuing it in a trend that could lead to more broken dreams of a family.

“I worry that women will make unwise choices,” says Cedars. A couple who feels they have an insurance policy with frozen eggs may decide to put off having their families even longer, and then be in for a shock when those eggs aren't viable. Cedars says the process of freezing seems to make eggs “age” as much as five years, so couples may not buy as much time as they think.

Of course, complacency can be worsened by ignorance. Many women still don't know even the basic facts about their fertility, Madsen says, such as when their fertility declines and what they can do to help preserve it.

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