This morning in a post, I asked if it is scriptural for ladies to go for artificial insemination if marriage is not happening and they are getting older.
We cannot deny the fact that there are so many ladies who are in their late thirties, some in forties, who are unable to get married because of the unavailability of suitable men.
Well, I'm not trying to answer the question of whether it scriptural or not for Christian ladies to go for artificial insemination in order to have their babies without being married.
My focus here is to educate ladies in general on a very important subject.
In Africa, procreation or child birthing is the most important reason for marriage. People get married and want to have children.
This means that a woman's chance of getting pregnant in marriage must be high because children are very important to African marriages.
Sadly, women are born with a limited supply of eggs, and eventually they will run out. Meaning, with every menstral cycle, a woman's eggs in reserve are depleted.
Hence, the older you are as a woman, the slimmer your chance of getting pregnant. By puberty, a woman's egg count might be 1 million; at 25, maybe 300,000. Then, around 35, the decline starts to get a bit steeper until all eggs are depleted.
Healthy women that age who are trying to conceive have about a 1 in 4 chance of getting pregnant during a single menstrual cycle.
In other words, 25 out of 100 women will succeed per month. By age 40, an average healthy woman has only a 5% chance of getting pregnant per cycle.
This is the reason the family of most guys frown at their decision to marry ladies who are in their thirties or older. The older a woman get, the slimmer the chances for conception because her eggs deplete with age.
So it is very important that a woman get married early and on time if childbearing is the thrust and her idea for marriage. But if you and your husband just want to be having sex, no problems.
For example, a woman at 30 often has around 100,000-150,000 eggs in reserve. By 35, that number is likely around 80,000. Late into the thirties, that number could be 25,000, 10,000, or fewer.
As a lady, to find out how many eggs you have left, you can have an anti-mullerian hormone (AMH) test. This is a simple blood test that's used to check how many potential egg cells you have left (ovarian reserve). If your ovarian reserve is high, you might have a better chance of getting pregnant.
Now, this is where I'm going. If you are already in your thirties as a lady and you are not yet married, there's a way to freeze your eggs ahead of when you will need them. It is called egg freezing.
Egg freezing, also known as mature oocyte cryopreservation, is a method used to save women's ability to get pregnant in the future.
Eggs harvested from your ovaries are frozen unfertilized and stored for later use. Some of our hospitals especially IVF clinics have the machines.
So go and make the necessary enquiries on how you can freeze your eggs ahead of the time when you get married and are ready to have babies.
I'm sharing this piece of advice so that you will not run riot from church to church binding household enemies and family altars.
Prayer houses and churches are filled with women looking for the fruit of the womb because most women are not even aware that they have fewer eggs, which make fertilization narrowed; hence, the reason they don't get pregnant.
For some, false prophets and fake ministers are cashing out on them, while others are being sexually mesmerized, hypnotized and told that once they sleep with them they'd become pregnant.
If you are a lady who is getting older and not yet married, go and freeze some of your eggs now. It will cost you some monies but it's worth it. I'm sure you don't want to blame anyone tomorrow that you are not able to conceive.