Today is my 34th birthday. I am not a big birthday person and have never been scared or worried about getting older. Honestly, I feel stronger and more comfortable in my skin in my 30s than I ever did in my 20s. However, in the fertility world, 34 is a worrisome number. Well not so much 34, but 35. Being 35 changes everything, which means the next year is more important than the last couple years have been in our journey.

 

Even though people are having kids later and later, the medical field hasn’t changed what they considered the "geriatric” age for having children. When you are 35 and going through fertility, they consider you high risk. When you are 35 and going through fertility treatments, the protocol changes because your eggs are considered by doctors to be "diminished". Instead of putting in one blastocyst, the protocol calls for implanting more which leads to higher chances of multiples and difficult pregnancies. For someone who wanted things to happen as they were supposed to happen and avoided her infertility issues, putting in more blastocysts scares me.

 

Actually, the whole thing is terrifying. I remember when we first started this process and every doctor and nurse told me that it would be fine because I was young and had so much time to have kids. Now I am 34 and looking at the next year with a knot in my stomach. I have one last year of trying to get pregnant before they change the protocol simply because of my age.