When you hit your early 30s and you are a childless woman, you will get “innocent” questions. Some of those questions are from strangers who will wonder about the state of your uterus as if it is suitable small talk. Many of them will be from your “well meaning” family who want you to reproduce because it is what they did and you gotta keep doing what the previous generations of yore have done. And some of these questions will come from yourself:
Do I want kids?
Is it time?
Many women say “Nah” and stick with “nah” happily. Some women say “Nah” and want to retract that statement when they hit their later reproductive years. They still feel young and vibrant…but their biology feels differently.
In my late thirties, I literally have more friends using IVF than any other method of getting pregnant. More than 8 million babies have been born through IVF from 1978-2018. (1)
It sounds almost easy because of how wide-spread it is. Until I had good friends tell me the nitty gritty, I had no idea what the process entails. I am sure I am not the only one. Here is the breakdown.
IVF stands for In Vitro Fertilization (and for reference, “in vitro” stands for “performed or taking place in a test tube, culture dish, or elsewhere outside a living organism,” which is why the first IVF baby was known as a “test tube” baby).
It takes several months to complete the whole process. The first step is taking fertility drugs for for months to help the ovaries to produce several mature eggs that are ready for fertilization. (2) Kelly, 39 describes the experience: “They warn you that being pumped full of hormones you won't feel like yourself, but I still wasn't prepared! I felt like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man who couldn't stop crying! I literally started openly weeping at the gym because an ASPCA commercial came on while I was on the treadmill.” (3)
She now has a son, but that isn’t the case for everyone. During this experience there may be daily ultrasound and blood work, which women have to fit into their already busting schedules. (2)
Stage two is removing those eggs from your body. In a hospital gown, you are given a mild drug for anxiety which also works as a sedative. You are then hooked up to an IV to deliver a local anesthetic and a doctor suctions the mature eggs out of each follicle to store them in tubes. It takes about 15 minutes but you can feel kind of loopy with the drugs. (4)
Side effects include cramping and spotting. The eggs are then mixed with sperm cells (the insemination part) (2). As the cells divide and become embryos (which will not be the case with every, or even any egg) people at a lab monitor the progress.
Then if there are embryos that have made it 5 days, they are sent to genetic testing. Weeks later, a frozen embryo transfer may happen with the doctor sliding a thin tube from the cervix into the uterus. The embryo is placed directly in the uterus. (2)
The woman going through the IVF procedure becomes pregnant if any of the embryos attach to the lining of their uterus. Audra, 38 describes the wait time: “The part that touched me the most was the implantation day. It was by far the easiest part of the entire process, but it was the day that I could potentially get pregnant. You work for a month or months to get to that point and then everything is out of your control; your body takes over. To say that I was a nervous wreck is the understatement of the year.” (3)