Esteemed Australian journalist, Lisa Wilkinson, has issued a powerful open letter about her miscarriages, urging other women to not take it for granted that they will be able to have children into their forties.
The letter comes in the wake of her friend and the Australian designer, Camilla Franks’s, recent interview about conceiving naturally at age 40.
In that interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Camilla said that ‘it was absolute BS’ that she was told she needed to spend ‘thousands of dollars’ on IVF – while in fact she thought ‘we need to take the fear out of it [getting pregnant]’.
Esteemed Australian journalist, Lisa Wilkinson (pictured), has issued a powerful open letter about her miscarriages, urging other women to not take it for granted that they will be able to have children into their forties
The letter comes in the wake of her friend and the Australian designer, Camilla Franks’s (pictured), recent interview about conceiving naturally at age 40
Lisa Wilkinson, 57, wrote: The heartbreaking truth is, the road to motherhood for women in their 40s is overwhelmingly littered with broken dreams and “I’ll get to it later” regrets’
Lisa Wilkinson, 57, who is mum to Billi, Louis and Jake, strongly disagreed with Camilla’s thoughts, however, writing for the Huffington Post:
‘The heartbreaking truth is, the road to motherhood for women in their 40s is overwhelmingly littered with broken dreams and “I’ll get to it later” regrets.’
The mother-of-three backed this sentiment up with statistics, which show that one in four women experience difficulty falling pregnant from the age of 35.
Added to this, by the age of 40, a woman’s odds of falling pregnant in her next cycle drop to just five per cent.
The 41-year-old Camilla founder shared a stunning beachside snap of herself cradling her bare baby bump alongside the announcement of her pregnancy on Instagram earlier this year
In the powerfully honest open letter, Lisa acknowledged that she ‘loves’ Camilla and considers her a ‘great chick’. She also said she was delighted that she is pregnant.
However, the journalist also added that to ‘come out and publicly slam the medical profession as she did on Sunday for their cautionary fertility advice in the lead up to that little pink line appearing on her pregnancy test, is irresponsible in the extreme’.
The 57-year-old wrote that her own experience tallies with that of what doctors told Camilla.
She said she may have had all three of her children in her 30s, and never had any trouble conceiving, but ‘it all changed very quickly when I turned 40’.
Having thought she had beaten the odds on her landmark 40th birthday and become pregnant, the mum-of-three wrote that at ‘eleven weeks I started to bleed’.
‘An ultrasound confirmed the worst. That tiny little person I could see on the monitor wasn’t moving. There was no heartbeat,’ Lisa said.
‘That precious little baby I was so looking forward to meeting hadn’t made it past eight weeks. Nothing prepared me for the sadness to come – and frankly, it haunts me still.’
Lisa (pictured) also went into detail about her heartbreaking miscarriages in her open letter, writing that: ‘It haunts me still’
That miscarriage was one of three for the Today co-host- ‘it was nature’s way of saying my eggs were just too old,’ she wrote.
At the time, she and her husband, Peter FitzSimons, had three failed attempts while they were trying for a fourth child.
The 57-year-old concluded her letter by saying that women should take their doctors’ advice and listen carefully to what they say.
‘Yes, of course conception and a successful birth is possible in your 40s. But it isn’t easy, can often involve heartache, and should not be described any other way,’ she said.
Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph , Camilla (pictured) slammed the common belief that women can’t conceive naturally in their late thirties and early forties and the fear instilled in women about having children later in life
Lisa’s open letter comes following designer, Camilla Franks, opening up about her unexpected pregnancy and becoming a mother at 41.
Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph, Camilla slammed the common belief that women can’t conceive naturally in their late thirties and early forties and the fear instilled in women about having children later in life.
‘A couple of years ago I went through so many different tests and got told I needed to do IVF and spent thousands of dollars all from fear of what I was being told… I think we need to take the fear out of it,’ Camilla said.
She said that she was given ‘the wrong advice’ and despite being told to ‘potentially go down the path of IVF’, she conceived naturally
She added that she was given ‘the wrong advice’ and despite being told to ‘potentially go down the path of IVF’, she conceived naturally.
‘This generation are working women, we don’t just leave school, get married, have children,’ Camilla said, whose grandmother gave birth to her mother at age 50.
‘I wouldn’t be me if I had just jumped into the world of motherhood. I’m so blessed that I’ve been able to have that chapter of running a business as well. I’d encourage all women to continue enjoying their careers.’