Even if you can’t get pregnant naturally after menopause, you may still be a candidate for IVF. During in vitro fertilization, a fertilized egg is implanted into the uterus.
If you froze eggs or embryos when you were younger, you can do IVF using your own eggs. If not, you’ll need to use donor eggs, because you won’t have enough or they won’t be healthy enough, Christmas says.
IVF involves combining an egg and sperm in a lab. Eggs are usually retrieved during a minor surgery after a woman has taken fertility medication that stimulates her ovaries to produce several additional eggs.
The egg is inseminated with sperm, and once the fertilized egg divides, it becomes an embryo. Healthy embryos can then be transferred to a woman’s uterus through a thin tube inserted in the vagina.
Even if you opted to use donated eggs for postmenopausal IVF, you’d be given hormonal treatments to mimic the hormone surge that would normally happen to prepare the uterine lining for pregnancy, Seibel says.
IVF isn’t always successful: Research shows that it may result in fewer pregnancies and live births in women older than 35. In fact, assisted reproduction technologies result in live births just 28 percent of the time in people older than 40.
Despite these rates, it’s possible to get pregnant using IVF after menopause. There are even several case studies documenting successful IVF postmenopausal pregnancies in women in their sixties (achieved, however, with egg donation, not biologically).
IVF is currently the only assisted reproductive technology available that can facilitate pregnancy after menopause. Other parenting options after menopause include adoption and working with a surrogate.
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