Forty five is the new ninety

When we girlies are arrive on this Earth we are born with over one hundred kazillion zillion eggs. At physical maturity we begin to shed them at a rate of three million, four hundred and fifty seven thousand a month until the age of 35. For the next ten years we lose eggs at an accelerating number starting at one point five billion, eight hundred and sixty five thousand a month, and rising up to the unprecedented levels of a kazillion, and nine hundred and ninety nine thousand just prior to the age of 45. Everyone knows it, the fertility specialists remind us every visit. Clinic staff know this too. The receptionist, the cleaners, the boy selling news papers out the front all know that by the age of 45 your eggs are well and truly scrambled.

The clock ticks, calendar pages are turned (unless you are up with all you techno gadgetry, you might be treated to one of those self updating digital displays) once midnight strikes on the eve of a woman’s 45 birthday, the real meaning of ‘use by’ dates are truly learnt. As of then your rather dodgey ovarian reserve of no more than thirty seven eggs is reduced to tumble weeds, rusty paper clips and assorted loose change (all of which is in a foreign currency and absolutely worthless to you at home.)

Yes, the modern wonder of ART, that creation we read endlessly as being responsible for sex ‘selection’ and ‘designer’ babies has us retired earlier than the average punch-drunk boxer. At least when race horses are put out to pasture it is then they can concentrate on breeding themselves a whole stable of valuable stud ponies.

What is there for us 45ers? Are we as ‘done’ for as our clinics tell us?

For here in our fair land of Australia, 45 is the standard cut-off point for clinics allowing us to cycle with our own eggs. We are not sure if this is legislated, or just a clinic set view. Brow beaten by five cycles of IVF disasters – leading to only one transfer – we have never bothered to look further into our actual ‘official’ options.

I had just turned 43 at the time of my first cycle, and I was given little hope of IVF success. Forty five became a powerful number as it was dangled at us whenever we ventured into Clinic Land. Apparently 43 is the same as 45 – a theory that would seem to be at odds with basic numeracy, but who am I to argue with fertility ‘logic’? So at 43 I was labelled ‘as good as 45’ (which loosely translated seems to mean ‘beyond hope’) and I started to fear and dread that number.

May of this year came and our whooping cough, sinus surgery, laparoscopy and town relocation delayed fifth cycle yielded no eggs. All the IVFstrodamus predictions of failure seemed to taunt me in my sleep, it sounded like disinterested fertility specialists and mannerless fertility clinic nurses saying: “We told you so!”

Plans to squeeze in another pre-45 cycle (or three) were frozen in time – unlike any of our sub-par embryos – without any real decision, the race against time was off. Oh yes, and our third fertility specialist, Dr Loverley advised us to not try again with my nasty old eggs.

I set myself in for a long winter and a slow bump and grind towards turning 45.

I waited for the world to end and my ovaries to turn to dust and dissolve from within.

I expected a B-grade sci-fi movie scenario (remember Logan’s Run?) whereby all women on the eve of turning 45 – and so obviously past their prime – would be put on the ‘fertility carousel’ having been rounded up by fertility police after time-release signals implanted in our uteruses (uteri?) alert authorities to our reaching the designated year allowance. We’d then be put out to ‘execution’ by a baby-less future, making way for the young and potentially fertile.

When that much dreaded day came a few weeks back, despite battening down the hatches and preparing for the worst, my 45th birthday landed in true TS Eliot’s The Hollow Men (or maybe that should be hollow women?) style by arriving with a whimper – and not the expected bang! I woke up and found myself to be no different than I was the day before, or even the year before. Maybe there was not much of a change from maybe five or even ten years ago.

Too long I bought into the fertility clinic driven thought that 45 is old. Too old to become a mother, too old to be much use for anything. Although I am not sure what can be done to improve clinic attitudes, I have sometimes wondered why the over 40s are accepted for IVF treatment if that has to involve giving us constant reminders about how we waited too long, and that our chances of success are remote at best?

Anyone female has not been able to experience motherhood prior to the age of 40 has her reasons – good or bad. Chances are she does not need those reasons compounded constantly with many lessons about the passage of time. There is every likelihood that she will be monitoring this on her own, without any help from fertility specialists, nurses, clinic staff or society in general.

This experience has been the impetus to make 45 the year of great chances and maybe even success. I may not have a baby, but I intend to have a little of my dignity back.