Sometimes, our status as PANK (Professional Aunt No Kids) is not voluntary, but a matter of circumstance or a matter of fertility. In fact, our relationship with our nieces and nephews has made some of us even more determined to have our own kids one day. But as we get older, infertility becomes an greater concern. Last week was National Infertility Awareness Week and next week is Mother's Day, so we asked our Savvy Experts at Fertility Ties for news they could share about advancements in infertility and fertility for women as they get older.

As more women are deciding to have kids at a later age in life, the advances in medicine, more specifically, in fertility treatments play an important role in allowing them to be able to conceive in their 30s and 40s. This option wasn’t always available, as women who wanted to have kids at those ages and had infertility issues, simply didn’t have the necessary medical care and technology needed to fulfill their dreams.

For many generations, Infertility was thought of as being more of a curse, a state that a woman had all the blame, even though men comprised close to half of all cases.  Medicine has significantly evolved since the Renaissance, from surgical techniques to the creation of antibiotics these past few centuries.  Yet, only until recently did anyone truly bothered with Reproductive Medicine; this in part because few considered it more of a condition or something people simply had to deal with as part of life’s difficulties..  

Fortunately, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) recently declared that Infertility is a Disease.  This means that everyone (let alone insurance companies) should view infertility no differently than say Diabetes, Hypertension, or other chronic conditions that can be overcome with treatments.  But unlike these diseases, infertility challenges an individual to the core making it difficult for many just to get through the day, let alone keep their relationships healthy. 

Advances in treatment for infertility

All these advances will make it much easier for many women who are not ready to have kids now to have better chances of achieving their dreams of conception once they’re ready, be it as a married woman or a single woman.

These technologies can also make a difference for other friends, family and loved ones in your life. For example, women diagnosed with Cancer and receiving treatments can have their eggs extracted before treatments so that they can be preserved for future use. Some of your friends and family members might be going through Secondary Infertility, which is the inability to conceive after having already given birth to at least one baby. Now they can have a chance at conception through all current treatments.

Despite all this new found awareness there’s still a long way to go with over 7.3 million Americans and around 80 million people around the world facing infertility. Also, in the light of the Octuplets being born earlier this year to Infertility treatments, and potential new regulations being talked about in various states it’s very important to maintain a united front when it comes to helping those millions of people going through infertility and continue to advocate for the patient and improve the options available to them.

Both the regulations and advancements in technology that occur in the present will affect either in a positive or negative light not only those who are currently going through infertility, but it can also affect you in the future as you embark into a journey of conception. For example, some states want to regulate the amount of embryos that can be transferred to a woman who is older than 40. This might be good if you’re trying to avoid another Octuplets case, but it’s not good if it’ll limit your chances for your first baby through fertility treatments if those regulations take place. It’s important to be informed on these issues as they affect your friends and loved ones in the present, and could affect you in the future.  We encourage you to learn more about Infertility issues so that you’ll be able to have more beautiful nieces and nephews in your life but also potentially your own kids in the future.

FertilityTies.com is an online community where you can find peer support and medical information and can ask Fertility Specialists questions online for free.