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.
Conclusion: Most women having a spontaneous singleton pregnancy at 43 years or older have an uneventful pregnancy outcome. However, in comparison with the women aged 25 to 35 years, they have significantly higher risks of cesarean and preterm delivery.
The pregnancy rate is less than 5% per cycle at age 43 years.
Fertility specialists quote approximately a 5% chance per menstrual cycle of getting pregnant naturally after age 40 vs. a 25% chance per cycle for women in their 20's, which is when fertility typically peaks and you have the best chance of experiencing healthy pregnancies.
Miscarriage issues
To wit, between the ages of 40-44, 34% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. After 45, this number jumps to 53%. These numbers shouldn't discourage you, however, especially if you read them in reverse: 66% of pregnancies between the ages of 40 and 44 don't end up with a miscarriage.
Having a baby later in life does increase your risk of complications like preterm birth, C-section, gestational diabetes, and high blood pressure, but many people have healthy babies and pregnancies after 40.
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.
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.
Down syndrome occurs in people of all races and economic levels. The risk increases with the mother's age (1 in 1250 for a 25 year old mother to 1 in 1000 at age 31, 1 in 400 at age 35, and about 1 in 100 at age 40).
Brigitte McQueen became a mother at 44.
Still, Ms. McQueen longed for a baby. In her 40s, she and her then husband opted for embryo donation at a fertility clinic in Sacramento. She had her first daughter at 44 and a second at 46.
Of course, as women age, the odds of conceiving also gradually lower. The ideal childbearing age is often considered to be in the late 20s and early 30s. Pregnancies later in life could come with some health risks. However, age is just one factor when it comes to giving birth to a child.
“By age 44, the chances of spontaneous pregnancy approach zero,” said Dr. Jane van Dis, M.D., an ob-gyn practicing in Burbank, Calif. Of course, reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization can help some couples skirt those numbers, but even those efforts can become less successful with age.
A pregnancy after 35 is sometimes called “high risk,” but it's important to put the facts in context. “The most likely outcome of a pregnancy for a woman in her 40s, once you get past the first several weeks, is normal,” Dr. Humphrey says. Forty-something pregnancies are no longer considered extremely unusual.
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%.
It depends on your age. If you're older, you'll have fewer antral follicles as someone who's younger. On average, women in their mid 20s to early 30s have around 12 to 30 antral follicles, while women aged 35 to 40 may have between 8 and 15 and women aged 41 to 46 may have somewhere between four and 10.
The chances of achieving a live birth in patients aged 43 years and older undergoing IVF/ICSI with their own gametes are low, even in cases of patients with a relatively 'normal' ovarian reserve for their age.
Tips to be a mother after 40
As science progresses, a safe and healthy pregnancy can be completed, but without forgetting that every pregnancy after the age of 40 is considered high risk and must be subject to exhaustive control by physicians. Natural pregnancies at this age are not impossible, but they are rare.
The study confirmed that women over 40 do have the highest risk of preterm births: 7.8 percent of pregnancies in this age group resulted in preterm births and 1 percent ended in extremely premature deliveries.
There's no way to prevent Down syndrome.
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.
Irregular period cycle and difficulty conceiving
If you are facing issues conceiving and have not been able to conceive for a while now, it could be one of the signs of bad egg quality.
A gap of 3 years or more greatly reduces the chances of sibling rivalry. By this time the older child is secure in him or herself and quite independent. In addition, the mother's body is fully recovered from the challenges of pregnancy and birth of the first child.
The hormonal shifts that occur during pregnancy and breastfeeding also protect against ovarian and endometrial cancer, and the more full-term pregnancies you have, the greater the benefit. Scientists are investigating how carrying a baby can reduce a woman's risk of other cancers too.