No, not me, honest. I seriously thought I'd already blogged about this but perhaps the computer at work ate it. If you spot it in a previous post do tell it to make itself known...
I have a friend at work who is a year younger than me, and her husband is a couple of years older than Mr Spouse (early 50s), and they have been undergoing fertility investigations and also investigating adoption. Based on the publicly available information, they were told they couldn't adopt a child under 7 in the UK, and they already had various tests showing that she has no problems at all but he has borderline to low motility.
So far so irritating. They were talking about adopting from Russia, and then found they had an adoption information evening and a fertility clinic appointment on the same day.
Fertility clinic: Your only hope is IVF, we'll put you on the waiting list straight away, [they don't want to consider IVF], it's your eggs dear, you are too old, there is nothing wrong with your husband, we'll give you C.lomid to give you a bit of a boost (no mention of monitoring ovulation while on C.lomid).
Adoption information: yes, adoption of a younger child (under 5, anyway) IS possible where one of the couple is older, transracial ditto, for at least their local authority and another one neighbouring (neither of which is ours, but both of which are close enough that it might be possible to apply to them).
3 comments:
Your friend needs a different clinic. What is their objection to IVF? But maybe they don't need it given the positive news about adoption. Why is it easier to adopt younger children if you're older or transracial? Not sure I get the logic.
Probably have not made myself clear! It's not easier to adopt younger children if you are older/biracial: it's actually possible (whereas the "public" information would tell you it's not possible) to adopt younger children if one of the couple is over 45; and it's also actually possible to adopt transracially in the UK, again the "public" information would have you believe that this is never possible.
I'm not sure precisely what their objections are to IVF but I suspect they are somewhat like our own: the success rate is low, especially at our age, and it seems like it can be really really difficult and heartbreaking: with such a poor prognosis, for them, adoption (maybe from overseas) seems like the better choice.
Yes, like drspouse said, we decided against IVF because the chances of success were too low.
Besides, that clinic sounds even worse than the f***tards at Edinburgh Reproductive Disservices.
Glad to hear that at least the adoption people are enlightened.
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