FERTILITY ISN’T FOREVER: Career woman writes about other career women’s woeful tales of barrenness. The headline is “When childless isn’t a choice” — but if a woman waits too long, then she has made a choice.
Theatre executive Jessica Hepburn is 43 and has been trying to have a baby for nine years with her partner, Peter. “It’s like a bruise,” says Jessica about the emotional impact of failing to have a biological child, “whenever you press it, it hurts. I often wonder what our kids would have looked like – Peter’s hair, my eyes? I always imagined motherhood would be part of my life. Creating a child with the person you love – it’s a very natural, strong desire for me.”
And yet she waited until 34 to give it a shot.
Jessica, whose infertility is unexplained [hint: she’s old], chose to undergo 11 rounds of gruelling IVF treatment, at a cost of £70,000. She has only recently paid off the debt.
She chose not to tell her friends and family everything she was going through, including a life threatening ectopic pregnancy and several miscarriages.
“I kept it absolutely away from my colleagues and I would go and have egg collection very early in the morning and be back at my desk by 10am. My ectopic pregnancy was discovered at three months and even though I was rushed to hospital, no one knew the full story. I also had a miscarriage at nine weeks and several biochemical pregnancies,which are very early miscarriages, and then of course a few unsuccessful rounds of IVF as well. Because we always felt so close, I couldn’t give up.”
The author of this article, Sangita Myska, is in her forties. (In this article from 2009, she is identified as 36 years old and a “Miss.”)
Earlier: 5 percent at 40.