A new study presented recently at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine’s (ASRM) annual conference has found that by age 38, the chances of conceiving begin to drop dramatically. And by age 43, it is 10 times more difficult to get pregnant than it is at 37.
The researchers analyzed data from nearly 200 women to learn how many eggs, on average, it took to produce one healthy embryo. With that information they split the women into age groups to learn how the process was affected. According to the study, a 37-year-old woman needs to produce about four eggs to get one healthy embryo. Given that a woman typically produces one egg per month as part of the normal menstrual cycle, that equates to four months of trying to get pregnant. But by age 43, a woman needs 44 eggs to get one healthy embryo, which equates to nearly four years of trying to get pregnant or producing 44 eggs through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Didn’t we already know this at a time when more and more women are delaying having their first child well into their 30s or beyond. According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 12 women has her first child at age 35 or older, compared to 1 in 100 women in 1970.
As the realities of being an ambitious professional collide with the risks of delayed motherhood, an increased number of women are starting to turn to egg freezing — a process that involves harvesting, freezing, and storing a woman’s eggs until she is ready to become pregnant. ASRM only endorses egg freezing only for medical purposes (for example, prior to a woman having cancer treatments that might impede her ability to conceive. But it has become a preemptive move made by healthy women who are now more aware of the risks of having children after 40 as ASRM no longer considers the process experimental.
For more information of egg freezing, please visit RPMG’s Egg Freezing Page.