One doctor in Beverly Hills said infertility is a growing problem worldwide, and he likens it to a pandemic: fertility issues that are coming up more often today than ever before. He says it's because more and more women are getting started later and later.
Remi Shaw says she can smile now with her fertility doctor after struggling for years to get pregnant. She now has a baby girl due in September.
"Basically she [her doctor] told me to just keep trying," Shaw said.
Shaw said she asked he OBGYN why she wasn’t getting pregnant, and couldn’t get a clear understanding.
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"And I was like, 'keep trying?' 'What do you mean? I’ve been trying!'" Shaw said.
Her doctor referred her to Dr. Shahin Ghadir, founding member of the Southern California Reproductive Center in Beverly Hills.
"We have a lot of people that come in and say they were trying to be careful their entire life and now that they want to have a kid, it’s really difficult," Ghadir said.
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Dr. Ghadir says the growing problem worldwide – he likens it to a pandemic – is because more and more women are getting started later and later.
"Our mothers had us in their 20s, Generations now are coming in their late 30s to start to begin to grow their families. And the female biology doesn’t allow for that. It decreases egg quality, egg count, it makes things very difficult for us," Ghadir said.
There was a reason Shaw wasn’t getting pregnant. At age 31, one of her fallopian tubes was closed entirely, the other considered too weak.
“I was devastated, I’m not going to lie. I started crying saying, 'oh my god, what am I gonna do?'" Shaw said.
In vitro fertilization, or IVF, was her only option.
It meant constant injections at home to create enough eggs for harvesting.
Of the 37 the doctor was able to retrieve, five were considered viable for pregnancy, and today, she’s four months pregnant with a baby girl.
"It’s just a process of trying to be there with them and knowing it’s going to get better,” her husband and the soon-to-be-dad Domonick Bowie said,
Now, as the couple prepares to welcome baby Bleu, they hope their story and being open about their infertility struggle will help other couples facing similar obstacles.
"It’s a beautiful process," Bowie said.
