Fertility and Age - A Broader View

Fertility doctors are, in my view, utterly ignorant of what can and does occur in the natural world.

So concludes a guest writer over at the blog Infertility - Fertility Over 40, a history buff who has a bone to pick with all the folks spreading negative hype concerning women's age and fertility. She brings to light a slew of historical examples of women not only getting pregnant after 40, but doing it without even breaking a sweat, so to speak!  She gives some pretty compelling evidence to her cause, through anecdotal examples throughout history and also provides some good statistical back up:

Here in the UK, there were 26,419 births to women over 40 in 2008, hailed as a "record high" having nearly doubled since 1998. But let's take a step back! In 1938 there were 27,200 births to mothers over 40, at a time when our population was significantly less so that the birth rate to mothers over 40 was even higher. In fact, births to "older" mothers only really dropped with the introduction of the pill and access to abortion. 

Are our fertility doctors really that out of touch with the way our bodies work? Given our culture's tendency to over prescribe and medicate, I wouldn't find that too surprising. But there's something else at work here...

While she makes a good point, it is a medical fact that women over 35 are more likely to be affected by reproductive problems such as endometriosis and fibroids. And while this may not prevent most older women from having children, the sad truth of the matter is that older women are much more likely to conceive a child with birth defects than their younger counterparts. March of Dimes gives us the following statistic:

A woman’s risk of having a baby with Down syndrome is:

• At age 25, 1 in 1,250
  
• At age 30, 1 in 1,000
  
• At age 35, 1 in 400
  
• At age 40, 1 in 100
  
• At 45, 1 in 30
  
• At 49, a 1 in 10

Perhaps so many older women are using IVF, not only as a method of overcoming declining fertility with age, but also as a way to screen for genetic defects in the embryo.  Perhaps the media and fertility doctors are misrepresenting or misinterpreting the reasons behind the use of artificial methods of conception.  Still...she does make a good point, and takes a healthy, broader view of fertility and age.

Read the full article on Fertility Over 40