(Newswire.net — October 2, 2014) Alicante, Alicante —
Countryfile presenter Julia Bradbury had been longing for a brother or sister for her young son Zephyr, when she was diagnosed with endometriosis and came to the conclusion that it wasn’t ever going to happen, but the good news is that her recent announcement reveals she has been comfirmed as pregnant following a succesful course of IVF treatment, and is said to be over the moon with joy.
The number of women getting pregnant in their forties has nearly doubled that of 1990 and up to four times as many than in the 1980s. This increase has been put down to the amount of women who are now going to university and then start a career before beginning a family. The Office for National Statistics reveals that in 2012 there were 28,714 pregnancies in England and Wales, when a mother had passed the age of 40. Incredibly enough in that very same year, the number of over-40 mothers overtook teenagers for getting pregnant for the very first time since records began.
The Countryfile presenter said she was never certain whether she would ever have children, not just for being over 40, but because she had also been diagnosed with endometriosis, an extremely painful condition that affects the womb. When it did come to the birth, there were even more complications when she was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia. At the end of last year, Miss Bradbury was quoted as saying that she would love her Zeph to have a brother or sister but at 43 she had to be realistic. Her new primetime ITV show called “The Wonder of Britain” shall be aired early next year.
As IVF treatment becomes more accessible and with success rates increasing, technology now provides us with a test to determine the baby’s sex a lot earlier. Though it was not clear whether Julia wanted to know the sex of her baby or not at this stage, the solution has been provided if she wanted to. Until now it has been necessary to wait until the 4th or 5th month of a pregnancy to find out what the sex of a baby was, through an ultrasound scan or even not until the third or fourth month with amniocentesis, but now it is possible to learn the gender of the child during week eight of a pregnancy by carrying out a simple blood test.
Determining the sex of the foetus at an early stage is important in the diagnosis of monogenetic diseases that are linked to sex chromosomes such as haemophilia or Duchene muscular dystrophy. During pregnancy the presence of total DNA outside the foetus increases in the mother’s blood plasma and can be detected after the fifth week of pregnancy. From the eighth week it is possible to isolate it and while using molecular biology techniques that have 98% efficiency, test for the presence of chromosome Y (a boy) or for its absence (a girl).
One clinic that does offer the test is IVF-Spain, located near Alicante. Complete IVF treatment information can be found on their website here: http://ivf-spain.com/treatments/first-visit
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