Pregnant at 45 With Her Own Eggs: One Woman's IVF Story

Mary Manjon was sitting in her office when she opened an email with a work contract attached, and the timing could not have been worse. Her doctors had just retrieved her eggs, a single frozen embryo was waiting, and her body was not yet ready for a transfer. In episode 122 of Lisa Pineda's podcast-style series Dismantling You, Manjon, a mother of two who became pregnant at 45 using her own eggs, walks through that collision and the years around it. The conversation traces a first pregnancy that took two years to arrive, a second that never came, a diagnosis of nothing at all, and a decision to try anyway. Pineda, who worked with Manjon during the pandemic in a fertility yoga program, frames the episode around what it takes to keep going when the numbers look grim and the schedule keeps shifting. It is a story about assembling a medical team, reading the odds honestly, and finding one hour a day that belongs to the body rather than the calendar.

How did a woman in her 40s find a fertility doctor?

Manjon's path to Dr. Enrique Soto did not start with a referral. It started on Instagram. Around 2021, when she was 40 and still trying to conceive after a first pregnancy that had been uneventful, she noticed a stranger documenting her own IVF journey. Manjon followed that account for roughly six months, watching how the woman prepared, what she asked, and which clinic she used. When that woman became pregnant under Soto's care, Manjon said to herself, in effect, why not me.

That detail matters because it shows how often patients make their most consequential decisions from partial information. Manjon was not reading clinical trial data. She was watching a single person's experience unfold in public and deciding that it looked like a path worth following. She was also honest that she weighed money and other practical factors before committing. Her decision to wait six months before reaching out was not indecision; it was a slow, deliberate check on whether she was ready for what the process would demand.

What does unexplained infertility look like from the inside?

Manjon's story has two distinct chapters that are easy to blur together. The first pregnancy took about two years to happen, and when she finally sought fertility help, she conceived. The pregnancy was, in her words, a fantastic one with no complications, and her first child was born in 2015. She began trying again in 2017. Nothing happened right away, and at first she told herself the second one would simply take its time, the way the first had.

By 2021, the arithmetic had changed. She was 40, the second pregnancy had not come, and the doctors she saw could not find a cause. Manjon described the working theory as "unexplained" infertility, a diagnosis of exclusion that means standard tests have not identified the problem. For many patients, that label is more disorienting than a clear diagnosis, because there is no single thing to fix. You can only keep testing, adjusting, and trying, and hope the right intervention appears. That ambiguity is why Manjon kept looking for anything that might improve egg quality, including the yoga and meditation practices that would later become part of her routine.

Why did the percentages matter less than the first hour?

When Manjon first sat down with Soto, the success figures he presented were low. She recalled that the numbers were hard to absorb in one sitting, and that they felt daunting. Her description of the moment is worth noting: she heard the percentages, and she decided to go ahead regardless. She said, in effect, that the team's approach was what made her feel secure enough to proceed, even with the odds in front of her.

Practically speaking, this is a useful distinction for anyone weighing IVF at an older age. Clinic success rates are population statistics. They describe outcomes across many patients with similar profiles, and they cannot predict how one body will respond to one cycle. Manjon's answer to that uncertainty was not to ignore the figures. It was to judge the people delivering them.

"He was never hurried." Manjon described her first appointment with Soto, which ran about an hour and a half, as the longest visit of her fertility journey. (Manjon, Dismantling You, episode 122, 6:49)

She emphasized patience. She asked questions she worried were naive, and the answer was consistently to keep asking. Manjon framed the relationship as one where she needed to feel secure with her partner, her doctor, and even the nurses. As she put it, at the end of the day you need to feel cared and supported and not just a number. (Manjon, Dismantling You, episode 122, 7:09) For a patient in a vulnerable state, that sense of being heard can be as important as the protocol itself.

What happens when the body says not yet?

The hardest stretch of Manjon's story came after the egg retrieval. An embryo existed, but her body was not ready for the transfer. Her hormone levels and uterine lining required further delays, and the team had to wait for her cycle to reset before proceeding. Each postponement meant another stretch of uncertainty, and Manjon said the wait wore on her. In 2022 she describes saying no to nearly everything, a stretch of deliberate withdrawal that she calls the year she said no. The phrase suggests not just exhaustion but a conscious decision to stop asking her life to bend around the medical timeline.

That is where the work contract arrived. A signed job offer and a single frozen embryo collided, and Manjon faced a choice: walk away from the process or move forward into a transfer that would soon require full commitment. In that moment, she turned inward first. She worked through her own feelings before raising the question with her husband. Her account of that conversation is one of partnership without pressure. He wanted to support the process, she said, but he never pushed her to do anything with her own body that she was not ready for.

Manjon said the most important thing she carried through this period was faith in a simple proposition: whatever happened, she would keep trying. She described the decision not as certainty but as what she called a walk of faith. (Manjon, Dismantling You, episode 122, 9:54) That framing is worth holding onto. Sometimes the decision to continue is not a feeling of confidence; it is a decision made while doubt is still present.

Can a yoga practice and meditation hour change an IVF cycle?

Pineda and Manjon connect the emotional side of treatment to a daily practice. Fertility yoga and meditation gave Manjon a stretch of time each day that belonged only to her body, separated from medication schedules, appointments, and the constant monitoring. Manjon has described that hour as an anchor. The episode does not claim that yoga improved her egg quality or caused her pregnancy, and it is important not to overstate that. What the conversation does show is how a contained, body-centered practice can give a patient a sense of agency during a process that is often mostly out of her hands.

For readers considering something similar, the practical point is to treat yoga and meditation as support for the medical plan, not a replacement for it. Coordinate with the clinical team, tell them what you are doing, and keep the practice gentle enough to sustain across weeks of treatment. Manjon's version was not about perfection. It was about showing up for the same hour, even when the rest of the day was uncertain.

What would she tell a woman in her 40s told her eggs won't work?

Near the end of the episode, Manjon offers advice that is deliberately simple. She says to get a good team, do your part, and do not stop trying. Each element matters. A good team, in her account, means clinicians who explain things patiently and treat you as a person rather than a schedule. Doing your part means following the protocol, asking questions, and taking responsibility for the parts of the process you control. And not stopping means accepting that some cycles will not work while still refusing to conclude that the story is over.

Her message to women in their 40s who have been told their eggs will not work is less a promise than an invitation to keep the question open. Her own outcome is one example, not a guarantee. Still, the episode is a useful corrective to the idea that a single discouraging consultation settles the matter. Manjon's path involved a second opinion-level choice, a stranger's example, a long pause, and a decision made with incomplete information. Those are the conditions many patients actually face.

Where to go from here

If Manjon's story resonates, the full conversation is the best next step. Pineda's episode 122 of Dismantling You runs about nineteen and a half minutes and covers the emotional sequence in her own words, including the details of the first appointment, the transfer delays, and the contract decision. Listen for the moments where she describes the questions she felt were too basic to ask, because they are often the questions that matter most. Then take the broader lesson with you: look carefully at the people on your fertility team, make room for one daily practice that belongs only to you, and remember that statistics describe populations while your case is still your own.