This usually happens between the ages of 45 and 55 – the average age in the UK for a woman to reach the menopause is 51. At this stage of life there are around 1,000 eggs left in the ovaries, but these aren't fertile.
As you approach menopause (which, for most women, happens in their early 50s), your egg supply dwindles. At the age of 37, the average woman has around 25,000 eggs left, and by the time she reaches 51, this will have fallen to 1,000.
Women are born with all the eggs they are ever going to have, and they don't make any new eggs during their lifetime. Women are born with approximately two million eggs in their ovaries, but about eleven thousand of them die every month prior to puberty.
Yes, babies who have ovaries are born with all the egg cells they're ever going to have. No new egg cells are made during their lifetime. This has long been accepted as fact.
Your Chances of Pregnancy
From age 15 to age 45, there are approximately 200,000 eggs left in reserve.
Egg Quality Deteriorates With Age
Women reach the peak of their fertility at around age 24. After this age, egg quality slowly deteriorates until around age 37, and then deteriorates more rapidly until about age 42.
However, pregnancy success rates using your own eggs drops considerably for women over 40. In the U.S., the likelihood of achieving a live birth from one egg retrieval in women between ages 41-42 is less than 20% (http://sart.org); in women above age 42, the rate is less than 5%.
Menopause. Natural cessation of ovarian function and menstruation. It can occur between the ages of 42 and 56 but usually occurs around the age of 51, when the ovaries stop producing eggs and estrogen levels decline.
“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.
Menopause occurs naturally when a woman's ovaries run out of functioning eggs. At the time of birth, most females have about 1 to 3 million eggs, which are gradually lost throughout a woman's life.
Even though women start with 1–2 million eggs, by the time you reach puberty only about 300,000–400,000 of the eggs you were born with remain. The monthly cycle described above then continues throughout a woman's life until there are no eggs left.
Researchers say female fertility decreases with age and conceiving a child naturally after age 45 is extremely rare. In addition, in vitro fertilization treatments are rarely successful in women over 45.
A vaginal ultrasound is the best way to accurately assess and count the number of antral—or resting—follicles in each ovary. These sacs contain immature eggs that may potentially develop in the future. Counting the number of follicles is called an antral follicle count (AFC), which is performed via an ultrasound.
Once she starts her periods, 1 egg develops and is released during each menstrual cycle. Pregnancy happens if a man's sperm meet and fertilise the egg. Sperm can survive in the fallopian tubes for up to 7 days after sex. Occasionally, more than 1 egg is released during ovulation.
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.
Although men never stop producing sperm throughout their lives, sperm production does begin decreasing after age 35. Motility, volume and genetic quality of sperm of older men are less likely to achieve a successful pregnancy even in younger women.
Although a man's fertility can theoretically last until death, sperm production has been found to decline from around the age of 50. Although it is still possible to conceive a child, and many men do have children in their 50s or later, it may take longer for you and your partner to become pregnant.
But if you're 45 and hoping to get pregnant, you should first talk to your doctor about your outlook. Depending on what he or she tells you about your fertility, your best bet may be to try options like in vitro fertilization (IVF), using a donor egg or using your own eggs you've frozen in the past.
Age is the single biggest factor affecting a woman's ability to achieve a pregnancy and have a healthy baby – either naturally or through IVF. IVF and IUI Treatment through our Bulk Billed Program is therefore only available to women who are 45 years of age or younger (at the time of egg collection).
Women in their 40s can get pregnant using IVF and realise their dream of becoming a parent. In fact, Dr Priya suggests that the upper age limit for a woman to undergo IVF is 50. “Though most women above 45 usually need a donor program,” she adds.
Thus, the pregnancy rate even with IVF (using her own eggs) is less than 5% in women above age 42 years. They are even lower at age 44 and practically zero at age 45 years.
Many 40-plus women do get pregnant, some using fertility treatments and some not. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually showed that the birth rate for moms aged 40-44 rose continuously between 1985 and 2019, at an average of around 3 percent per year.
According to figures from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), one-third of those attempting pregnancy over the age of 35 will have trouble getting pregnant, and two-thirds will not be able to get pregnant on their own once they are past age 40.