After several years of trying and numerous disappointments, Sandi Savage, author of the soon-to-be-released Savage Path memoir, remained strong, believing that she would one day become a mother. But, little did she know that she would become the proud mother of a beautiful baby girl, at the age of 50!
Sandi and her husband Tim, from Lexington, Kentucky, welcomed their daughter Josephine Jane, named after Tim’s grandmother and Sandi’s mother, last August and have had a happy life ever since.
But the road to this happy moment for the couple was long and difficult. “My husband and I got married late in my life, I had my 40th birthday on our honeymoon, and the following year I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” she said. News Week.
“So it started our process of talking to the doctors about our fertility, because we did want children and knew we had to stop going through surgeries and chemotherapy and that kind of agreement.”
Data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that each year in the United States, about 264,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in women and about 2,400 in men.
Of those affected, according to the study, about 42,000 women and 500 men in the U.S. die each year from breast cancer.
Sandi spent the following year in and out of hospitals, adding: “I had a lumpectomy, a double mastectomy, went through a few rounds of chemo and then recovered from it, and the doctors cleaned us up so we could start trying. to have children, so we started trying, but I did not get pregnant. “
The couple spoke to numerous fertility doctors and began the process of recycling to create an embryo and go through IVF, but after several rounds, it still did not happen to them, until one day they received the greatest out of the blue. bless.
Sandi said: “My husband’s brother’s wife offered to become our pregnancy carrier. So she started the process of transferring our embryos and took one.”
According to Sandi, her sister-in-law, Alyssa, 36, who already has two children with her husband, approached them one day and said she felt ready to carry a child and asked, “Would you please let me carry my niece or nephew. your?”
The couple warned Alyssa that it was not going to be an easy journey, that she would have to take a lot of medicine and embark on long journeys as their fertility doctor was out of state, but she was determined to bring her cousin into this world and had do not hold back.
And so the couple and Alyssa began the process and transferred their embryo into the sister-in-law to carry safely for the next nine months. She said: “It was beautiful. She was so amazing, and I’m so grateful she asked because it was not on our radar for anyone else to try to carry for us.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that fertility usually decreases with age in both men and women, but the effect of age is much greater in women.
Women in their 30s are about half as fertile as they were in their early 20s, and their chance of conception decreases significantly after age 35.
But according to Sandi, there are so many things I think are different about being an older mom, and while some things are harder, other things are easier.
“I lived a lot of life before I became a mother, and therefore I can take that life experience, that is wisdom on my part, and understand how to raise her in a way that she is strong and independent. . “
She stressed that as an older couple, they are also much more stable in many aspects of life, including financially, which can be very difficult for younger people these days. “She has the advantage of being born in a stable environment.”
The biggest downside to the new mom is how physically demanding motherhood is. “It’s physically demanding to have a newborn baby when you’re over 50. So get up at night and all that, I have to make sure I really take care of myself and be as healthy as possible, so that I have the energy to take care of newborns. “
Sandi describes her daughter as a “wild, wonderful, wild child”, and says she is very intelligent and an overachiever. “She reaches milestones about a month and a half earlier than she should be, so she’s a beautiful handful.”
She talked about how mentally and physically challenging the whole process was, and how much faith you need to have in it, she recalls an episode from a few years ago.
“About four years ago, my husband did a Facebook Live and said we believe in our daughter and we’re going to name her Josephine after my grandmother, and we know it’s going to happen.” And it did happen!
The biggest advice Sandi gives to women in a similar position as hair is to find a fertility doctor that they are comfortable with as they are going to spend a lot of time together.
“I looked through and talked to several doctors until I found a doctor I was comfortable with, who would come with us on our trip, because I did not know how long it was going to take. And so I knew if there a doctor with whom I would have communicated and dealt with for five years, I had to have a good relationship with him. ”
She also said you need to be mentally and physically ready for this and make sure it is the path you want to walk, “there is a lot of medication and a lot of injections.”
And lastly, she said it is very important to keep trying, as it does not always happen with the first try, “I know women who went through 13-14 transfers before they could have their child. So even if it is difficult , continue if it is the desire of your heart. “
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