Lara was born in January of 2022, into a household infected with Covid. Both my wife and I had caught it only days before her birth and it was inevitable she would contract it. Omicron was circulating and I suspect that was what we had contracted. At a week old, I could see she was struggling and took her in to our A&E, suspecting the worst. A few hours later she was admitted to an isolation ward, where she would spend the next ten days.

I could see the doctors were at a loss in terms of treatment protocols for the young infants in the ward. The gold standard at that stage was to pump the infant full of antibiotics and hope for the best. I refused the treatment, arguing she was not febrile and that she should be monitored rather than medicated. Ignoring my request, they pressed ahead and she spent the next seven days on a drip.

She was discharged after a week, her little system somehow had managed to fend off the virus without any ill effects. My wife was overjoyed, but I harbored concerns and I still do. There is absolutely no research done on young infants and the long term impact of the virus on their systems. Babies are notoriously difficult to treat and even harder to enroll in any form of meaningful trial. This results is a wait and see scenario, which, if you’re the parent, is far from ideal.

She’s made it, almost uneventfully – aside from a few minor incidents, mostly involving the cat and her desire to separate it from it’s tail – to her first birthday and first steps and on the surface, all appears well. It’s the rest of her journey that concerns me, and it’s a concern all new parents should share, post Covid.

We cannot unsee the last three years

Particularly if you’ve been invested in the saga of Covid, and I have, writing copiously on the pandemic, the lockdowns, masks, mandates and then, the vaccines. We’ve seen both the best of healthcare (in terms of dedicated doctors and nurses tirelessly running the gauntlet) and the worst. We’ve been lied to, locked down, manipulated, terrified and then coerced, sometimes at gunpoint, into rushed vaccines and experimental medical technology.

Now, we have to witness the last act of the Covid saga, of a triumvirate not even Shakespeare could have envisaged. The lead players, science, politics and medicine, trying to extend their flawed narrative just that little bit longer, and to play out their final scene they’ve conscripted our children. We are living out the vaccines swan song and they’re singing it to our babies.

There is some benefit for some children, those for whom the risk of the vaccine is outweighed by their medical conditions or predisposition to developing serious Covid symptoms. For most other children, Covid is not life threatening. There is simply no logical reason to expose them to the risks of a growing number of serious adverse events linked to the mRNA vaccines, some of which prove fatal.

There is not one shred of serious, robust clinical evidence to support the CDC’s Covid vaccination campaign for children.

Given what I know and what I’ve witnessed over the last three years, I now face a conundrum as a parent. One that I am certain many other parents also face. How can we ever again trust public health, and the science that drives it. As the person responsible for ensuring my baby daughters wellbeing, I now have to weigh up the risks (often unquantifiable) of each medical intervention she is exposed to, before consenting to it. I know that in many instances I will now decline these interventions.

Is the reputation of the vaccine irreparably damaged?

It may very well be in the minds of many parents, as evidenced by diseases we had once eradicated, making a slow and determined return. Small outbreaks of measles, polio and other childhood ailments are telling signs of our distrust in a system that is supposed to protect us, and which, under ideal conditions, does.

mRNA has issues, perhaps not the actual idea, but the particles we use to deliver the enveloped instruction in, the production, which exposes the vaccines to impurities with E.coli present in a number of tested samples, and then of course, the fact that the products don’t perform as advertised. The body does not, in some individuals and for reasons unknown, stop producing the protein the vaccine instructs, as we’d been assured. There are numerous other issues, to complex for this article and therein lies the rub.

Much of what is currently under development in terms of cutting edge medicine blithely assumes we’ve got mRNA all figured out, when truth be told, we are still stumbling to understand all the subtle nuances of the technology. Vaccines, flu shots, cancer treatments and other rare diseases will, in the future, all be delivered with mRNA technology.

My young daughter now faces medical choices that didn’t exist, pre-Covid. Am I going to expose her to these new treatments. Absolutely not. I will wait, as should responsible science, to see what emerges from our global clinical trial involving nearly two thirds of the worlds population. I pray I am wrong, but emerging evidence suggests otherwise.

In the meanwhile, old fashioned polio drops and measles, mumps and rubella vaccines will have to suffice.

The post Born into the age of Covid appeared first on Medika Life.

A lot has been written on the ideal ages of the mother and father for producing the perfect offspring, one that will be blessed with the best on offer from both parents. There isn’t wholesale agreement on the topic, but as a basic guide the following combination of parental ages are considered to be ideal for the production of Superbaby.

A father between the ages of 27 and 30 years of age and a mother between the ages of 18 and 20 

Hardly typical of the current trend in most Western countries, where women now delay conception, for various reasons, often into their late thirties and forties. Careers, financial constraints, education and various other factors influence their decision . There is strong data and evidence to suggest this tendency is contributing to increased levels of genetic abnormalities and compromises the fetuses chance of normal development. 

We’ll examine the female’s role in this cycle first and then look at the male.

The Dusty Incubator

If we place emotion to the side and view the female body purely from a biological point of view, then the analogy of the two incubators can be applied to the female womb and reproductive system. Age deteriorates the optimal operating conditions of this unit. Typically ready for production at the age of 13, the womb reaches optimal operating capacity five years later. 

At 18, the female body is in the best physical condition it will ever achieve and each year thereafter, its condition declines. Its not just the unit, but the body supporting it that is subject to the degenerative effects of aging. Most importantly, and key to the whole process of creating life, is the woman’s ability to produce healthy eggs.

Our bodies don’t believe in the principal of saving the best for last and no where is this more pronounced than in the way the female reproductive cycle works. 

Mommy Egg’s Life Cycle

At birth, the normal female ovary contains about 1–2 million/oocytes (eggs). Females are not capable of making new eggs. There is a continuous decline in the total number of eggs each month. By the time a girl enters puberty, only about 25% of her lifetime total egg pool remains, around 300,000. Over the next 30–40 years, her entire egg supply will be depleted. 

Although we cannot know with absolute certainty how many eggs remain within the ovaries at any given time, most women experience a significant decrease in fertility (the ability to conceive a child) around the age of 37. At the time of menopause, virtually no eggs remain.

The large supplies of eggs within each ovary are immature (primordial), and must undergo growth and maturation each month. The eggs are stored within follicles in the ovary. During a woman’s lifespan, large numbers of follicles and oocytes will be recruited to begin the growth and maturation process. The large majority, however, will not reach full maturity. Most die off in a process called atresia. Only about 300–500 of these eggs will mature over a women’s life span.

The maturation of eggs typically takes about 14 days and can be divided into 2 phases. During the initial period as many as 1000 eggs begin to develop and mature. The second phase requires gonadal hormone stimulation to stimulate further development. Even though hundreds of eggs have begun to mature, most often only one egg will become dominant during each menstrual cycle, and reach its’ fully mature state, capable of ovulation and fertilization. 

The remaining eggs/follicles will wither and die. Pre-pubertal girls do not produce the gonadal hormones necessary for the second phase of development, so the many eggs that started to mature will simply wither away. The large number of eggs that are used each month account for the steady decline in the female’s total egg pool that occurs from birth to menopause.

The question we need to address is the following. Is there a difference in quality between the 20 year old females matured egg and that produced by a 30 or 40 year old? The definitive answer to that is yes. Age is the number one factor that influences the quality of a woman’s eggs. 

The age related decrease in quality has a proportionate influence on the risks posed to the embryo or developing fetus. Poor egg quality is closely associated with chromosomal abnormalities in embryos, also known as aneuploidy. The take away from this is the following. To decrease age related risks to the fetus, conceive early.

Its important to mention that age isn’t the only factor that can influence egg quality. Poor life choices, dietary intake, drug abuse, alcoholism, prescribed medication and other factors influence the quality of eggs in young women. Couple these life choices with age and the risks are multiplied.

The mother’s physical condition

Women who choose to conceive in later life are faced with a number of challenges their younger versions manage to evade. The entire process, from conception to delivery, is a walk in the park for young women. Their physiology is in its prime and everything usually works without complication. Women in their thirties and forties aren’t this fortunate.

Older women (30+) have a higher risk of having gestational diabetes, placenta prevail, placental abruption, preeclampsia, a still birth or miscarriage. These risks increase exponentially with age and factors such as high blood pressure, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and other age related conditions can seriously impact an older woman’s odds of conception or producing a health baby.

Daddy Sperm’s Life Cycle

Now we know how age influences things from a female perspective, lets examine the male’s role in the creation of life. Unlike women, men don’t produce a limited number of sperm cells. At 102, little else might work, but the man can still sire a child. Our question then, is does age also affect the quality of sperm?

Men younger than 40 have a better chance of fathering a child than those older than 40. The quality of the sperm men produce seems to decline as they get older.

Most men make millions of new sperm every day, but men older than 40 have fewer healthy sperm than younger men. The amount of semen (the fluid that contains sperm) and sperm motility (ability to move towards an egg) decrease continually between the ages of 20 and 80. The risk of miscarriage is higher for women whose male partner is older than 45 , compared to men younger than 25 years of age. This speaks directly to the quality of the sperm produced as men age.

Building those Babies

While it is true that many women in their thirties and even into their forties have healthy pregnancies and babies, the fact remains that many struggle to conceive after the age of thirty. This article isn’t about conception though, it is about advocating the benefits of conception before the age of thirty, not for your sake, but for your baby’s.

Because of the changes that happen in eggs and sperm as we age, including damage to genetic material, children of older parents have a slightly higher risk of birth defects and genetic abnormalities. The risk of mental health problems and autism spectrum disorder is marginally higher in children of fathers older than 40 than in those with younger fathers.

It is estimated that the risk of having a baby with a chromosomal (or genetic) abnormality is approximately one in 400 for a woman aged 30 and one in 100 for a woman aged 40. That risk alone should be sufficient to give people pause for thought. Our desire for a family cannot outweigh the risks posed to our unborn children.

The risks of miscarriage and complications in pregnancy and childbirth are higher for older women than for younger women, and the risk of miscarriage is further increased by the age of the father.

What about IVF and freezing eggs or embryo’s

If eggs are harvested before the age of thirty you dramatically increase your chances of a viable pregnancy. There are however no guarantees and to revert to our dusty incubator analogy, implanting the fertilized egg into a less than perfect growth environment (an older womb) increases the risk that something could go wrong.

Your partner will in theory have aged with you and it is therefore wise to have sperm frozen at the time your eggs are harvested, unless you opt for the choice of freezing a fertilized egg or embryo.. Its a simple step that reduces the risks associated with the process of fertilizing the eggs later.

In Australia for instance, the chance of a live birth from one complete IVF cycle (which includes all fresh and frozen-thawed embryo transfers following one ovarian stimulation) is about:

• 43% for women aged 30 to 34 years
• 31% for women aged 35 to 39 years
• 11% for women aged 40 to 44 years.

For older women the chance of having a baby increases if they use eggs donated by a younger woman.

With typical IVF, where eggs are removed, fertilized and then implanted again within days, the whole process is made proportionately more difficult by the age of the mother. The older the womb, the less likely the implanted egg’s chances of survival. 

The post A Laypersons Guide to Building Better Babies appeared first on Medika Life.