Undiga Emuekpere: Basic Fertility Health Awareness Could Change Outcomes

Undiga Emuekpere, Lead Partner and Consultant at Oka’mara Law and Consulting, shared a post on LinkedIn by Montgomery Fertility Center, adding:

“As a woman and a fertility lawyer who sees a lot of donor-egg surrogacies, this has to be one of the clearest explanations about age-related female fertility decline I have seen.

One of my biggest concerns is that the power dynamics between intending parents are rarely unaffected by an egg donation. The non-genetic mother can often find herself in dire straits if the relationship breaks down, especially if there was no marriage.

I completely understand why many women put off starting families, but I think if there was more awareness of basic fertility health, the outcomes would be much better. It would probably put people like me out of work, but that’ll definitely be progress!”

Quoting Montgomery Fertility Center’s post:

“The increased risk of miscarriage with age, even in healthy women, stems from a fascinating biological process.

Egg progenitor cells undergo division while in the mother’s womb, creating cells with 46 chromosomes. To prepare for fertilization, these chromosomes must be halved to 23. This process relies on spindles, which start the pulling apart and then pause, essentially freezing the state of the chromosomes.

Imagine stretching a rubber band and keeping it that way for years. Over time, it becomes brittle and prone to snapping. Similarly, these spindles, frozen for decades, degrade. When they eventually try to pull apart chromosomes, errors can occur, leading to incorrect chromosome numbers in the egg. Fertilizing an egg with these errors can result in embryos with chromosomal abnormalities, which are a common cause of miscarriage. The longer this ‘frozen’ state persists, and the more it’s exposed to environmental factors, the higher the chance of these critical errors occurring.

On this episode of Housecall, host Dr. Steven Kariya of Montgomery Municipal Cable (MMCTV) speaks with Dr. Oluyemisi Famuyiwa about fertility health and what to consider regarding the health of your eggs.”