Career or Family…Which Options?

Women with previous abdominal surgeries such as appendicectomy and bowel surgery need to inform their doctors. These operations can cause severe pelvic peritoneal adhesions leading to blockage of their fallopian tubes. Your doctor may request you to do an x-ray called HSG, to confirm the status of your fallopian tube. If your tube is confirmed blocked, the best alternative for pregnancy is to go through IVF treatment. Obviously this will have an impact on your decision to delay pregnancy as the success rate of IVF declined with age.

Women with gynaecological problem such as fibroid, ovarian cyst and endometriosis may also consider not to delay their pregnancy.

Women with uterine fibroid, usually presented with heavy and painful period. If the fibroid is found on the inside of their womb, it may cause difficulty to get pregnant and sometimes can cause recurrent implantation failure or miscarriage. Your doctor will advise you for surgery to remove your fibroid.

Women with endometriosis or cyst will usually have difficulty to ovulate and their fallopian tube may be blocked due to pelvic adhesions. These women may need long term treatment and follow up.

Women who are healthy may consider freezing their eggs if they do not want to “freeze” their career. This process involves the women undergoing ovarian stimulation just like IVF to produce eggs. Once enough eggs are available from the process, they are being frozen for future use. The advantage with this method is that the eggs frozen from younger women are better quality than the eggs produce when they decided to get pregnant at later stage. The main disadvantage with this method is that the eggs may not survive the freezing process. The women will then miss the opportunity to get pregnant when she decides so.

Women must also be made aware of the risk of pregnancy at older age. The risks include premature labor, hypertension, diabetes, small baby, premature labor, miscarriage and higher risk of chromosomal anomalies like Down’s syndrome.

Women must understand the risk of delaying pregnancy before deciding between career or family. Men do not have a biological clock. If the women decide to start their fertility clock later, they must make sure they are fit and healthy. They must also consult their fertility expert.