‘Conceive in your 20s or risk childlessness’

Professor Geeta Nargund, a consultant gynaecologist, has written to the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan urging schools to teach girls about the risks of infertility if they leave it too late to get pregnant.The militant ‘Femi-nazis’ are predictably furious, insisting that fertility is a feminist issue and women should not be told when and if they […]

Professor Geeta Nargund, a consultant gynaecologist, has written to the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan urging schools to teach girls about the risks of infertility if they leave it too late to get pregnant.
The militant ‘Femi-nazis’ are predictably furious, insisting that fertility is a feminist issue and women should not be told when and if they can have babies because it is entirely up to them.Which is all well and good if it were true. But it’s not.
And I know that personally because I was one of those women who left it (almost) too late to start a family. Because as much as women – including me – want to take control of their lives and their destinies and choose what they do and when they do it, our fertility is not entirely in our control.
Yes, we can control NOT getting pregnant with free and easily available contraception. But when it comes to getting pregnant when you want to, then Mother Nature has a lot more input than most of us would like to think.
The truth is, you can use as much expensive face cream as you like to slow down the ageing process on the outside, but that won’t stop your eggs from growing old on the inside.
These Angry Young Women are completely ignoring the basic biological truth about fertility because we are all more fertile in our 20s than our 30s and your ability to have a baby naturally and easily goes down every day that you wait.
As an ambitious career woman myself, I know the truth. I didn’t start trying for my first baby until I was 36 – partly because of my career and partly because I had not yet met a man with whom I wanted to start a family. Yet despite us both being physically healthy, we spent six years trying for our much–wanted family of two children.
At the end of those six years, we had managed five pregnancies, four miscarriages, endured three rounds of IVF and managed only one healthy baby.
We are of course delighted with our perfect daughter, who is now eight, but neither of us had ever envisaged having an only child.
Despite all our best efforts – and tens of thousands of pounds spent on IVF at the best clinic in the country – we couldn’t have another child.
Test after test proved that there was absolutely nothing wrong with either of us other than the simple undeniable fact that I was too old and so were my eggs.
Had I started trying for my first baby at 30, doctors advise me, I would probably have knocked out two babies in no time, without the heartache of miscarriage or the horrible and costly experience of IVF.
Yet millions of young women are still being told they can wait and wait and wait and still have their first baby when they’re 39, 40, and even 45.
The newspapers are full of tales of happy smiling new mothers who always eventually get their baby. But in reality that doesn’t always happen.
I have a dozen or so friends who all desperately wanted children but left it too late and now regret all those years leaving it ‘just another six months’.
Yes, ladies, you can have it all – but not all at the same time. And while careers can wait, Mother Nature cannot.
Now another generation of young women is being sold the same big fat lie about their fertility.
They believe they can easily have babies well into their 40s and, if they can’t do it naturally, then there’s always IVF. But women will struggle to conceive by 40 and the glib advice to ‘freeze your eggs’ completely ignores the fact that IVF has only a 25 per cent success rate for young women, plummeting to a shockingly low 5 per cent for 42-year-olds.
And the misguided faith many career women have in IVF also neatly sidesteps how truly unpleasant IVF is, both physically and emotionally, as well as the pressure it puts on even the strongest marriages, with many couples’ relationships breaking down under the pressure.
Fertility experts are right to call on the Government and schools to tell girls the truth about fertility.
But it’s not just up to politicians, doctors and teachers, it’s up to all of us to make sure that the next generation of women make the choice to have or not to have children based on fact and not fiction.
After my own trials and tribulations, I have become evangelical in my campaign to educate and advise young women not to leave starting a family until too late, advising colleagues to ‘get on with it’ as soon as possible. And during career talks to young undergraduates, after I tell them how to make their way in the world of work, I tell them not to forget the importance of finding a good man and making babies before it’s too late.
I love my job and I have had a wonderful career, interviewing Prime Ministers and film stars and travelling the world, appearing on television in front of millions of people, and hosting my own radio show.
But nothing – and I mean, NOTHING – has ever come close to giving me the same joy and fulfillment as hearing the words ‘I love you, Mummy’ from my little girl.
Young women can shout as loud and as angrily as they want about how fertility is a feminist issue but Mother Nature isn’t listening and neither should the rest of us.
If young women really want to have it all, they need to separate the facts from fertility fiction. If you want a baby, just get on with it!

Culled from Mail online