How to get pregnant at 50 without IVF

After multiple failed pregnancies, Maria Lancaster miscarried again when she was 46. At age 47, however, she finally gave birth to a daughter, though her pregnancy did not come through in vitro fertilization, or egg or sperm donation. Rather, Lancaster is a "snowflake mom," Ozy reports, having adopted an embryo in order to become pregnant and have a child.

There were believed to be more than 600,000 frozen embryos being stored in the U.S. in 2011, reports LA Weekly, which terms embryo adoption a "sort of by-product of IVF" — making use of embryos left over after women successfully undergo the procedure. A rep for the nearly 20-year-old Snowflakes Embryo Adoption and Donation program — the first embryo adoption agency to open its doors, per LA Weekly — says at least 1,000 snowflake babies have been born over the years.

Where IVF can cost as much as $20,000 and still have less than a 4% success rate with women over 44, per Ozy, embryo adoption costs about $3,500 and gives a woman in her 40s a 50-50 shot of becoming pregnant.

"If you're doing embryo adoption, age doesn't really matter as long as you have a uterus," an OB-GYN tells Ozy.

Another doctor tells LA Weekly that her clinic at USC transfers adopted embryos into women up to 53 years old; the American Society for Reproductive Medicine recommends age 55 be the cutoff.

"It is becoming more and more common, but there's a very small minority of people who want to donate their embryos," an attorney tells the Chicago Tribune.

Ozy has more on the process — and how much the government has spent promoting it.

(These human embryos grew outside the womb for 13 days.)

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