Boost Your Chances of Becoming Pregnant

Even if you’re not ready to be a mom, start planning now to protect your fertility, advises top reproductive expert Margareta D. Pisarska, M.D. She explains why in Ask the Doctor, a women’s health video series produced in partnership with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center...

You’re focused on your career and not ready to get pregnant. Yet you know you’d like to have children someday. How to be sure you don’t wait too long and reduce your chances of having a baby?

Start planning when you’re young – consult your OB-GYN and ask for fertility tests no later than your late 20s or early 30s, advises OB-GYN and reproductive endocrinologist Margareta D. Pisarska, M.D., Director, Center for Fertility and Reproductive Medicine, Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles.

“Women aren’t thinking about what they need to do for their future fertility,” she says. “We need to be proactive, and think about our future reproductive potential since there are options with today’s technology.”

It’s important because women are born with a finite number of eggs and lose them as they age, she explains. Some also lose too many eggs prematurely, she adds.

If fertility tests show that the reserve of healthy eggs in your ovaries is dwindling, you can have some removed and saved for future use to increase your chances of becoming pregnant when you’re ready.

“We’re able to freeze eggs and have a fairly good success rate [at fertilizing them],” Dr. Pisarska says. “It’s like insurance.”