Once you reach 45, your fertility will usually be so low that a natural pregnancy is unlikely for most people. But some people may still have a “menopause baby.” This refers to a pregnancy and delivery that happens when you're in perimenopause, the transition into menopause.
Can you have a normal, healthy pregnancy at 45? Yes. Assuming you have top-notch prenatal care during your pregnancy, you eat well and have a healthy lifestyle, you take care of yourself during your nine months, and you come into your pregnancy as healthy as can be, your pregnancy can be problem-free.
“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.
At 45, your chances of getting pregnant are no more than 3% or 4%. That's not to say it's impossible, but assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are almost always necessary, with IVF being the most common.
Pregnancy in Your 40s
If you get pregnant after 35 years old, experts call this an “advanced maternal age” pregnancy. But it's still possible to get pregnant and deliver a healthy baby in your 40s. Childbirth at older ages has become more common too. Since the 1990s, birth rates in people aged 40-44 have gone up.
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.
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. Fortunately, this does not necessarily mean that a woman is incapable of carrying her own child.
"Spontaneous pregnancy [rates for] someone 47 is VERY low," Kort wrote in an e-mail, explaining that your chances of conceiving naturally at that age are less than 5 percent each month, and the miscarriage rate in the first trimester is 70 to 80 percent.
It is true that fertility does decline with age, but many women conceive naturally aged over 40 and go on to have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.
A woman's biological clock
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.
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.
By age 43, your egg supply is near its end. Your risk of pregnancy complications, such as high blood pressure and gestational diabetes, increases after 35 as well, and continues to rise into your 40s. Miscarriage rates begin to skyrocket in your 40s as well.
Births in women older than 45 held steady. Women ages 40 to 44 had 114,730 of the 3.8 million babies born in 2017; women 45 and older had 9,325.
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.
The primary reason for this is the declining egg quality. While you may still produce many eggs, they are likely to have chromosome-related defects that reduce their viability. This puts you at the risk of abnormal pregnancy, conceiving a baby with Down syndrome, or a miscarriage.
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.
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.
After age 35, there's a higher risk of pregnancy-related complications that might lead to a C-section delivery. The risk of chromosomal conditions is higher. Babies born to older mothers have a higher risk of certain chromosomal conditions, such as Down syndrome. The risk of pregnancy loss is higher.
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.
How common is pregnancy after 40? These numbers show us that there are still 70% of women in the 40-44 age range that are not at risk for infertility. This means that the odds of conceiving are actually in your favor.
So on average, when we look at large groups of women, of women who want to conceive at age 40, about half will get pregnant naturally. But that decreases quickly to perhaps 20% to 25% by age 42 to 43. And by age 45, it's quite rare to become pregnant naturally.