“I didn’t know age mattered so much!” That statement, or a variation of it, is one that I have heard too many times when talking to others struggling with infertility. We all know of a young person who “accidentally” got pregnant, oftentimes saying it was their first time or while using birth control. However, we have probably all also heard stories of older women with teenage children suddenly pregnant with an “oops” baby. So, it isn’t surprising that when a couple is struggling to conceive, many don’t automatically make the correlation between age and infertility. The sad truth is that age does play a significant role in a woman’s chances of getting pregnant.
The American Society for Reproductive Medicine released a telling statement; “As women delay childbearing, there is now an unrealistic expectation that medical science can undo the effects of aging.” As the female partner of a couple trying to conceive ages, fertility does decline and in fact few women over the age of 45 are still considered fertile at all. A 1957 Fertility and Sterility study found that by the age of 40, 33% of couples are infertile and that by age 45 that number jumps to 87% of couples. Most clinics that perform IVF have an upper age limit when they will not use the woman’s own eggs, typically somewhere between the ages of 42-45.
Most studies agree that, not considering factors other than age such as ovulation disorders or male factor, there is little decline in fertility until about age 31. From about age 31 until 35 there becomes a slow annual decline in fertility and after age 36 that decline become more rapid. The primary issue with fertility and aging in women seems to be due to egg quality. All of a woman’s eggs are present at birth and as the quality declines as they age chances of “natural” conception also dwindle. Poor quality eggs also results in higher miscarriage rates in older women who do manage to conceive.
I didn’t bring up the age issue in an effort to encourage people to have children before they are ready, but rather just to point out that it may have more significant of an impact than you may think. Oftentimes there are women who must turn to IVF, or donor eggs for no other reason than that they are of a certain age. My husband definitely didn’t understand why I was so concerned with age even after I shared statistics with him about the decline of fertility annually. He maintained that we were young and that there was no reason to rush into fertility treatments. He was right, but so was I. I knew that we had additional factors that would make it difficult to conceive – PCOS, only one fallopian tube, fibroids and polyps, AND we were at the beginning of the decline because of age. We knew that we were ready to have a family. We wanted to try to have a biological child with my eggs, and perhaps the most persuasive reason for moving forward when we did – we had literally years of failure to point to as an indication that we might have trouble getting pregnant even with fertility treatments. If you know that the time is right for you and your partner to have a child don’t let anyone tell you that you are still young and that you have plenty of time. Don’t be afraid to pursue fertility treatments because you think you aren’t old enough. The age of fertility decline might be sooner than you think.
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