Anastasia

First to thank you for raising this topic. I was desperately searching on Internet just for the curiosity to read storey about Maricia Cross, although I was 100% sure that she had used donors eggs. If there were not twins - I would have left some possibility that she had her baby even without ART, but with twins - no way!
Fortunatelly generation of women in last 30 years was lucky that ART was introduced and developed, but unfortunate price is that they were mislead by the media and their own lack of information about the limits of the ART. I am one typical example affected by that with the unhappy circumstance that I am dealing with infertility. I do regret now in age of 42 why I didn't know all the facts that I know now earlier. And these facts are not giving too much hopes for women after 40 to have their genetical children even with ART. I regret the fact that I believed that science is stronger than the nature.
Yes, I am the woman who was insulted by the comments of the 70 year old neighbour who never had children (was married) who came to congragulate me after my wedding when I was 34, with the warnings that I should start making children asap. Yes, I am one of these who wanted to make career, money, travel the world...But now if you ask me, now when I adore my 4 year old daughter and facing the certain fact that never, never again in my life I will have more children, I feel sorry that I missed that great opportunity when I was younger; not that I would have changed the way I was and prefered to become stay-at home mam raising 5 kids and living in poverty, but I would have certainly had more agressive approach to overcome infertility in yonger age when my chances were much better and changed a bit my priorities of that time.
But, to go back to the beggining: I had my first and only child in the age of 36, almost 37 (to avoid decimals), using ISCI, since the cause of infertility was male factor (very low sperm count). I was so relaxed for the second child, since I was LUCKY to have my first treatment succsesful and I didn't even rush to get into the new treatments, I even started planning treatment dates by horoscop sign of the future baby!
What a fool I was! Now, after 3.5 years of ISCI treatments and more than 10 embrios which didn't implanted I do realize how lucky I was. I had a weak up call when in age of 40 I was brutally rejected by one clinic who didn't even want to deal with me with my own eggs and from that time I started to panic and do everything more agressively, since at that time I've realized that I don't have to much time left. Right now, I am going to 3 clinics parallel, trying to take my last chance in the age of 42, since most of the doctors told me that after age of 43 they din't have a case of woman getting pregnant with her own egg!
So, my conclusions are: God save you Anonymous in the age of 38 and without a man, who still don't believe in all this what we are talking about. You better beleive it and if you want kids, don't even worry about a man (except for his sperm count). I do believe that exceptions are possible (my two best friends were having children in 41, and 42 and it's definetely a true storey), but unfortunatelly I don't believe in pregnancies after age of 43-44, except maybe in the case woman is genetically extremelly fertile, which most of us not. If I didn't believe that pregnancy after 40 is possible I wouldn't be waking up in 5;30 rushing to one clinic, going to another at 9 and being at work after. I wouldn't be spending average 15K per year. I wouldn't be planning weekends, vacations, everything in my life for the past 3.5 years looking first in my menstrual calendar. But, girls, unfortunatelly chances are slim, I wish I knew, since I enjoy motherhood as much as I enjoyed all the single, adventourous life before.