Mediate Michigan

When we married in 2001, my husband and I thought about having children someday. It was very important to us, though, that we first be financially stable enough to support them and give them plenty of parenting time.

We were aware of our biological clocks — who isn’t? But before we knew it, we’d been happily married for eight years. I was 30, he was 32, and we still were not ready to be parents. Knowing that time was running out, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we probably would not have children.

Then we found another option: a way to postpone parenthood without risking the higher miscarriage and genetic disorder rates that occur in babies conceived from parents older than 35.

We did this by undergoing in vitro fertilization and freezing our embryos.

Most couples resort to in vitro only after years of trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, a process I think of as Desperation IVF. Instead, we chose to preserve the advantage of our current youth and fertility. I call it Preservation IVF.

via By freezing embryos, couples try to utilize fertility while delaying parenthood.