Motherhood - Too many & Too old ....

Because of our struggles with fertility issues I'm always interested when I hear of stories in the news where women have beaten the odds. But this week there were two cases that more upset me then made me happy.

One was a single mom in California that conceived Octuplets via IVF. This lady already has 6 kids under the age of 7 at home and now has 8 more babies to care for. I believe that this is somewhat irresponsible on the part of both the mom but also the doctor who did the actual transfer. I know when we received treatment at our regional fertility clinic our doctor advised us that if we did IVF treatments they would only transfer 3 embryos at one time and that was only due to my age. Usual procedure was 2 in one transfer.

The other case was a 60 year old couple who conceived twins via donor eggs and an IVF procedure performed in India. Again I find this somewhat irresponsible. Our clinic will only perform IVF on women up to the age of 50 (which I personally believe is still too old). This babies where born premature but with few complications and from what I have read the mother had a few issues but nothing out of the ordinary. While I can totally understand their desire to want children I just think that at 60 the children will at best have 20 (maybe 25) years with their parents. There appears to be a large family unit that surrounds this couple so I assume the children will be loved and cared for in the event something happens to either or both of the parents in the future.

But to each is own...I feel very blessed with the two beautiful children that I have and wish both these ladies nothing but goodwill and hope that their dreams have been realized.