Although of course there are exceptions, using own eggs for IVF by women over the age of 45 is unlikely to be successful. This means that you are very unlikely to get pregnant at 45 with own eggs.
Egg quality is largely determined by the ovarian environment that the eggs spend their final 90 days of development in; women in their 40s generally have a poor ovarian environment for producing high-quality eggs.
“It's exceptionally rare for patients to get pregnant naturally at 50 or over 45. They make history,” said Dr. David Keefe, an obstetrician-gynecologist and fertility researcher at New York University. In part that's because around age 50, many women are entering menopause, after which egg harvesting isn't possible.
For most people, estrogen levels begin to fall gradually when they are in their 40s. A person will continue to ovulate and menstruate, but periods may become irregular or less frequent.
It's possible, but almost half of women over 40 experience fertility issues, according to the CDC. Women over 40 have about a 5 percent chance of getting pregnant in any single ovulation cycle. (That's compared to a 25 percent chance for women in their 20s and early 30s.)
It's highly unusual for a woman to get pregnant on her own after age 45. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2008 there were 0.7 births per 1,000 women ages 45 to 49, compared with 9.9 births per 1,000 women ages 44 to 40.
Have sex at least every other day during your fertile window. Understanding your own menstrual cycle is one of the most important things you can do, studies show you're most likely to get pregnant if you have sex within a day or so of ovulation.
A woman's peak reproductive years are between the late teens and late 20s. By age 30, fertility (the ability to get pregnant) starts to decline. This decline happens faster once you reach your mid-30s. By 45, fertility has declined so much that getting pregnant naturally is unlikely.
The oldest verified mother to conceive naturally (listed currently as of 26 January 2017 in the Guinness Records) is Dawn Brooke (Guernsey); she conceived a son at the age of 59 years in 1997.
Audra McDonald. McDonald and her husband, Will Swenson, were thrilled when they discovered that they were expecting a baby together when the Broadway star was 46.
Other midlife mums include David Bowie's wife Iman (46 when she welcomed Alexandria in 2000), Holly Hunter (who gave birth at 47), Halle Berry (47 when she gave birth to her second child) and Marcia Cross (45). Closer to home, several well-known faces became mums in their 40s.
When you are born, this number has reduced to around two million and by the time you reach puberty and begin menstruation (start your periods) you will have somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 eggs remaining. At menopause, you will have 1,000 to 2,000 eggs remaining.
Women have “perfect” eggs below the age 30, but then egg quality starts to decline, which explains declining fertility. Over the age of 45, almost all the eggs which fertilise will create chromosomally abnormal embryos and therefore the chance of healthy, ongoing pregnancy is close to zero.
The pregnancy rate with IVF using your own eggs is practically zero. We have had several patients at InVia insist on trying IVF with their own eggs. We have not had a single live-birth in women above age 45 years. An exception is a report of a 50 years old woman in India who recently had a live birth with IVF!
Your Chances of Getting Pregnant: 45 and Older
Success rates are between 0% to 1%, and most clinics recommend using eggs donated by a younger woman for those who want to conceive between ages 46 and 50. For a female in their mid-40s who wants to have a biological pregnancy, using a donor egg is the best bet.
How can IVF help in your natural reproductive cycle? Conception and full-term pregnancy can happen naturally any time between puberty and menopause, which in theory can be around 14 to over 50. The average age of women receiving IVF treatment using their own eggs or embryos is 36 years.
Pregnancy after age 45 years is infrequent and the mother and baby should be considered as a high risk. There is a greater incidence of spontaneous abortion, gestational trophoblastic disease and chromosomal abnormalities in the fetus.
By age 35, there's about a 15 percent chance of getting pregnant naturally per menstrual cycle, and by age 40, it drops to around 5 percent or less per cycle (around 1 in 10 women per cycle). At 45, there's only a slim chance of conceiving naturally, without fertility treatments or help.
If your menstrual cycle lasts 28 days and your period arrives like clockwork, it's likely that you'll ovulate on day 14. That's halfway through your cycle. Your fertile window begins on day 10. You're more likely to get pregnant if you have sex at least every other day between days 10 and 14 of a 28-day cycle.
If you are older than age 35 and planning to have your first baby, you may have concerns about becoming pregnant later in life. You may have heard that a woman's risk for complications during pregnancy goes up after age 35. The fact is that most women in their 30s and 40s have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.
Though studies show that 10-25% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, with advanced maternal age, this risk increases exponentially. To wit, between the ages of 40-44, 34% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. After 45, this number jumps to 53%.
Menopause signals the end of the ability to have children naturally. While perimenopause precedes menopause, there is still a menstrual cycle during this time. The menstrual cycle might become more irregular, but as long as a woman is still actively menstruating, there is still a chance of becoming pregnant.