At 47, Sonia Kruger knows that her chances of falling pregnant are very slim, but that hasn’t stopped her from trying.
The Big Brother presenter has always wanted children, but didn’t find the right man until she met her current partner Craig three years ago.
They have been trying to conceive ever since, first naturally, and then through IVF. So far they have been unsuccessful, but Sonia still cherishes a hope that motherhood might still happen for her.
Related: I had a baby at 50 – without IVF
“It’s been a struggle,” she tells the October issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. “We did conceive naturally several times and I miscarried on a couple of occasions.
“We tried IVF and it wasn’t successful. The doctors were very clear with me too, that for women over the age of 45, which was the age we attempted IVF, the success rate is zero.
“You still believe it can happen, and you see stories, and you think maybe that can happen for us, but the odds are definitely very slim.”
Despite all the advances in assisted reproduction, conception is not easy for women over the age of 45.
As one of Australia’s leading IVF clinic reports, in nearly 20 years of operation, they have never achieved a live birth for a woman of 45 or more using her own eggs.
Sonia says she has come to terms with the fact that she might never have a baby of her own. She doesn’t want anyone’s pity, but hopes that speaking out about her fertility struggle will help others going through the same thing in silence.
“I think for a lot of women my age, who perhaps didn’t find the right person until later in life, you can want children as much as you like but it doesn’t mean it is going to happen,” she says.
“I do have a lot of children my life. My brother has a three-year-old. My friends have babies. I think there are far worse things that can happen to a person.
“The reason I have never spoken about it before is I don’t want people to think, ‘Boo hoo, poor me’. There are plenty of people out there in the same situation. It is more about understanding, and perhaps encouraging people to be understanding of women in this age bracket who have struggled and are still struggling.”
Read more of this story in the October issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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