Can Women Really Have It All?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN HOST: Career or family -- it's a struggle for a lot of women. It's reassuring to hear, as many women do, that it's pretty simple, to just put your biological clock on hold. You are about to meet a woman who says that's all a big lie.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): Can women have it all? Well, as Tina Fey's character in "Baby Mama" explains, it's a choice.</s>TINA FEY, "BABY MAMA": I made a choice. Some women got pregnant, I got promotions and I still aspire to meet someone and fall in love and get married, but, that is a very high risk scenario. And I want a baby now. I'm 37. It's too much for a first date, isn't it? Is it too much?</s>GUPTA: In fact, according to the CDC, the age of first time mothers increased from 21 to 25. If Hollywood is an indicator, it's higher. Halle Berry had her first child at 41, and another little boy at 47. Salma Hayek and Nicole Kidman were 41 when they gave birth for the first time. Geena Davis had twins at 48.</s>GUPTA: But just how accurate is all of that? Well, Tanya Selvaratnam, she's the author of "The Big Lie." And she says not at all. This is a provocative book -- thank you for being on the program.</s>TANYA SELVARATNAM, THE BIG LIE: Thank you for having me. It's so exciting.</s>GUPTA: Well, thank you. You know, "The Big Lie" is a provocative title. Let me just start though. Who is being lied to? Who's doing the lying?</s>SELVARATNAM: Well, I explore many big lies in the book. One of which is that women can delay motherhood until they're ready to have a child. If they're not able to get pregnant naturally, then science will help them. Now, I ask, are those lies that were told or are they willing deceptions? And there isn't one clear answer. I mean, they are the lies we tell ourselves and there are lies we grow up with.</s>GUPTA: We are surrounded by this culture where you see women having babies much older. It's on the cover of magazines. And something that, you know, we tout as an accomplishment. You think that's part of the lie as well? That people are more willing to accept the fact it's not a problem to delay? We see it everywhere.</s>SELVARATNAM: Well, I think, especially in today's society, which is so based on images, we prefer the positive spin, we prefer to present the positive image. And one of the goals with the book is that people share their stories, that we can balance the optimistic scenarios with the heart-breaking ones, I mean, the point of the book is not that people won't be successful in having a pregnancy when they're in late 30s and 40s, which is that you need to be aware of the statistics, so that you're more prepared, so that you're armed with information to make better choices. And part of it is the celebrity culture that shows us all the success stories of women having kids in their late 30s and late 40s.</s>GUPTA: Yes. And it's interesting because, as you said, there maybe sort of optimistic spin put on this. But yes, I want to share some of the facts because you brought this up. Fertility does decrease as a woman ages. And, you know, as you get older, if you are trying to get pregnant over the course of the year, for example, at age 25, chances are about 78 percent. By 30 years old, it's about 63 percent. By age 40, just 36 percent. Then, at 45, it's 5 percent. Now, again, these are the numbers, these are the facts. And this may not be a surprise to some. You say, is it that women aren't hearing that message or they are choosing to ignore it? It seems like a lot of obstetricians will counsel the patients, at least mention this, that fertility goes down as you age.</s>SELVARATNAM: I trusted my doctors. I have great doctors. But it was only after my third miscarriage in fall 2011 when I then went to a fertility center that the fertility expert sat me down and told me exactly what the statistics are. I mean, I think most women, most men know that fertility decreases after age 35, steeply. We don't know exactly how steeply and I feel like if we have that information we might approach our decisions in a different way.</s>GUPTA: And you weren't able to have a child? You had three miscarriages you said?</s>SELVARATNAM: I had three miscarriages and then my story has a silver lining. Even though I didn't have a child, I was able to save my own life because it was actually through the process of pursuing fertility treatments that I was diagnosed with two different types of cancer. And they were caught early enough that they were able to get the tumors. I feel great now.</s>GUPTA: I'm glad. You look well. We talked about that during the break. Let me ask you because we were talking about this in my company. Everyone has a strong opinion on this. And I said candidly, I said, I can't believe -- I thought women knew this. They knew fundamentally that your fertility decreases as you age. They may not know the exact numbers. But that is something that seems like women and men, for that matter, know.</s>SELVARATNAM: Well, there's also this euphoria of encouraging women to pursue their goals. It's not that for instance, there's a chapter of feminism in my book. It's not that feminism told us not to be mothers, it's that it told us all these things that we could do aside from being mothers.</s>GUPTA: It's a fascinating idea and fascinating book. Congratulations. I know it's gotten a lot of publicity. As I said, we couldn't stop talking about it within in our</s>SELVARATNAM: Well, I hope it helps people.</s>GUPTA: I really appreciate you being here. Thank you. And, you know, there's obviously a lot of anxiety around this topic. It can be provoke this way. But knowledge is power. And if you are concerned about fertility, there's a pretty simple test that can tell you where you stand.</s>GUPTA (voice-over): Amy and Tim Hoffman's relationship was right out of the storybooks.</s>AMY HOFFMAN, FERTILITY PATIENT: We met right after college in our hometown. Actually grew up in the same hometown. We got married in the year 2000. We've been dating for about three years.</s>GUPTA: After the wedding, dreams of someday starting a family. But it didn't go according to plan. After four years of trying off and on, the Hoffman's realized something was wrong. Amy went in for a battery of tests including one called an AMH. It's a blood test that can determine roughly how many eggs a woman has left. For Amy, the result was shocking.</s>HOFFMAN: The number came back incredibly low, which reflected that I had a really low egg count.</s>DR. DOROTHY MITCHELL-LEEF, FERTILITY SPECIALIST: We are finding that many of these ladies actually have lower ovarian reserve and number of eggs left than anticipated. We are not sure why. We are trying to get more of the young women to get the test done so they would know where they stand as far as being able to have children in the future.</s>GUPTA: Despite her low test results, Amy was able to harvest her own eggs and go through the process of in vitro fertilization. She is thrilled to be the mom of twins.</s>HOFFMAN: It's amazing.</s>GUPTA: She said the simple test could spare many women a lot of agony.</s>HOFFMAN: We just think that we are invincible and that we can all have children into our 40s. And for some people, that's possible. But for most people, it's not.</s>GUPTA: Now, that test only costs about $40. You can do it anytime. You don't have to go off birth control to do it either. If fertility is a concern, though, when you're watching this, your annual visit is a good time to talk to your doctor about it. Now, coming up, those big hits in the Super Bowl. You probably saw them. An electrifying player offers up his perspective on all this and I have to say I was stunned by what he was going to tell me.