Family-building using IVF with PGT-A for advanced maternal age

Because female fertility declines with age, it can be more difficult for women over the age of 35 to conceive without assistance. To fight a woman’s biological clock, our Austin IVF center offers IVF with PGT for advanced maternal age. By using advanced reproductive technology, our fertility specialists can increase the likelihood that a patient conceives and gives birth to a healthy baby.

Understanding age and female fertility

A woman is born with all of the eggs she will ever have. As she ages, the quality and the quantity of her eggs begins to decline. A woman is at the peak of her reproductive potential in her twenties and early-thirties. A healthy and fertile 30-year-old woman has a 20% chance of conceiving each month. Fertility begins to decline more rapidly after a woman reaches her mid-thirties. By age 40, a woman has a less than 5% chance of conceiving each month.

The odds of conceiving not only decrease as a woman ages, so does the likelihood that she will ovulate a chromosomally normal egg. Abnormal eggs can lead to miscarriage and birth defects, but our Austin IVF center offers IVF with PGT for advanced maternal age as a fertility solution.

The process of IVF with PGT for advanced maternal age

When a woman comes to our Austin IVF center for IVF with PGT for advanced maternal age, she embarks on a multi-step fertility journey.

Ovarian stimulation. The woman will begin by taking medications to stimulate her ovaries to produce multiple eggs.

Egg retrieval. When the eggs are mature, the fertility specialist will retrieve them during a quick, outpatient procedure.

Fertilization. The IVF lab will fertilize the eggs with sperm from the woman’s partner or her chosen donor, and will then monitor them for embryonic development.

PGT. When the embryos have reached Day 5, 6 or 7 of development, six to eight cells are gently removed from the area that will become the placenta. The genetics lab will perform preimplantation genetic testing, or PGT, to determine which embryos are euploid, or chromosomally normal, and most likely to develop into a healthy baby. The embryos are frozen while our Austin IVF center awaits the PGT results.

Embryo transfer. Based on the PGT results, the fertility specialist will transfer one chromosomally normal embryo to the uterus. By transferring just one embryo, a woman is less likely to experience a risky pregnancy with twins or triplets.

After two weeks, the woman returns to our Austin IVF center for a pregnancy test. If the results are positive, she remains under the care of her fertility specialist until approximately 10 weeks gestation when she transitions to the care of her obgyn.

Contact us if you would like to learn more about IVF with PGT for advanced maternal age.