# 42 yrs and thinking of conceiving ... Where to start?



## Goldwhispers (Sep 7, 2014)

Hi all, my partner and myself are fairly new in the UK - we desperately wanted to adopt but the process here is so strict that they rejected us due to  not having enough of a support system, no permanent housing (because we rent), to be quite honest I found the whole process completely risk averse and was a bit frustrated by how difficult adoption is here - instead of waiting a whole year to apply again and possibly be disappointed again we are going to try conceive - but I'm a bit worried I might have left it too late - I know a few people who have been pregnant over 40.  I'm 42, and in good health - never had a child before.  The other thing I wanted to ask was where to start- ideally because we don't have a big budget I wanted to try buy sperm and inseminate myself - anyway I'm new to this, pretty clueless on where to start - I checked out the London clinic and they seem very expensive - is there cheaper way to do this?  Any suggestions?


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## mamochka (May 23, 2013)

Goldsw - i think it will make sense before you spend any £ on insemination to assess your fertility profile. For this you need to do blood tests for day 2-3 of your cycle for estradiol, lh, fsh, prolactin and scan to see how many follicles you have on each ovary. Alternatively instead of scan you can do another blood test AMH which more or less estimates your current egg reserve. If you know you are ovulating through opk it would be good to check blood serum progesterone needed to maintain pregnancy. I guess you can try to do all this on NHS! But in reality i dont know as i am a newbie to UK as well. M


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## Goldwhispers (Sep 7, 2014)

Thanks Mamochka that sounds like sound advice, what is OPK?


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