Once over 45, you may not conceive without the help of IVF and other ART procedures.
Baby fever can strike at any age, and if you’ve waited until a bit later in life to try to conceive, you may wonder if you’re too old to have a baby.
A pregnancy in your 40s automatically puts you in the “advanced maternal age” category. While getting pregnant may be harder for some after a certain age, others may sail through relatively easily. Many factors are at play, including your current health status and how close you are to menopause.
There is indeed a biological clock of sorts. It starts when you get your first period and stops when you reach menopause. As time goes on, your chances of having a successful pregnancy decrease as your egg reserve diminishes, your egg quality declines, and your hormones change.
Even if you have a lot of eggs and you’re in your 20s or early 30s, your chance of getting pregnant in any given month is one in four. By the time you reach 40, only one in 10 women will get pregnant each cycle.
Generally, women enter perimenopause sometime in their mid-40s, but some may hit this point as early as their mid-30s. You’re still producing eggs during this time, so pregnancy is possible, albeit more difficult to achieve.
Once over 45, you may not conceive without the help of IVF and other ART procedures. That said, any woman of any age can get pregnant, with medical help, provided she has a “normal uterus,” even if she no longer has ovaries or ovarian function. Many women can carry pregnancies after age 35 and beyond.
However, there are certain risks, for both mother and baby, that tend to increase with maternal age. Conceiving later in life presents several potential challenges for women. Pregnancy in older women also raises the chances of developing gestational diabetes, a condition that can lead to the baby growing excessively large in utero, potentially causing birth injuries.
The increased risk of pregnancy complications in older women often leads to a higher rate of Cesarean deliveries compared to vaginal births. C-section rates show a clear upward trend with maternal age, climbing from 26 percent at age 20 to 40 percent at age 35, and reaching 48 percent by age 40.
You might also want to ask whether certain preconception tests might be helpful. You can get blood tests that check your hormone levels, thyroid function, and ovarian reserve (the number of eggs you have). Other tests can check for any abnormalities or damage to the reproductive organs themselves, such as the uterus and fallopian tubes.