Yes, you can try IVF with your own eggs at 43, but success rates are significantly lower due to age-related decline in egg quality, making donor eggs a much more common and successful option, with many specialists advising donor eggs for women over 43 for better chances of a live birth. While some women achieve pregnancy with their own eggs, it often requires multiple cycles, and the main challenge is the increased chromosomal abnormalities in older eggs, leading to lower implantation and higher miscarriage rates.
IVF success rates for women over 40 tend to be lower compared to those in their 20s or 30s. According to SART data, women aged 40 to 42 have around a 20% chance of a live birth using their own eggs across multiple embryo transfers. For women 43 and older, that number drops to about 8%.
How does age impact my fertility? Fertility does decline after the age of 40. Women who are around 40 who are not ready to have children yet may choose egg freezing. However, the chances that the same woman can carry the pregnancy a few years later decrease as the woman gets older.
According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM), the majority of fertility clinics set an upper age limit for women using their own eggs for in vitro fertilization (IVF) between 42 and 45 years old.
While it's not possible to stop the natural decline in egg quality that occurs with aging, research suggests that certain lifestyle changes, dietary patterns, and targeted fertility supplements may help support egg quality and the ovarian environment during the final stages of egg development.
Chances of IVF After 40: Success Rates by Age
By age 43, the chance of a live birth from one IVF attempt is down to roughly 5%. By age 45 and above, success with your own eggs becomes exceedingly rare (often below 1% per cycle).
Jennifer Aniston underwent IVF treatments throughout her late 30s and 40s, a challenging period where she tried everything to conceive, eventually continuing into her early 50s, ultimately deciding to share her private fertility struggle years later in an interview with Allure.
The pregnancy and live birth rates per initiated cycle in patients older than 42 years who underwent IVF treatment with their own eggs were 10.9 % and 9.6 %, respectively, for 43 years and 10.9% and 3.6 %, respectively, for 44 years (Cetinkaya et al., 2013).
Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon
Throughout her discussions Not only did Mariah Carey become a mother, but also bravely shared her challenges with fertility issues and how she overcame them through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) with the support of an egg donor.
Author
At 40, your chances of getting pregnant within a year are about 40 to 50%. And by age 43, a woman's chance of getting pregnant within a year drops significantly to only 1% or 2%. So why the steep drop-off in fertility among women in their 40s? It's all about the eggs.
A study named “Vitamin E as an Antioxidant in Female Reproductive Health” suggests that vitamin E improves women's overall reproductive health and improves egg quality. For men, it helps to boost sperm quality, and when taken with vitamin C has been shown to reduce DNA fragmentation.
Based on these facts, fertility specialists often suggest egg donation, which improves the chances of a successful IVF. Another fertility solution for this age group can be IUI or intrauterine insemination, which yields about 5% success rate per cycle for women over 40.
So yes, “Ovulation still occurs in perimenopause,” says obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Sara Twogood, Cedars-Sinai Medical Group, California, US. “Just more irregularly and infrequently than in normal reproductive years.” By the time you reach menopause, however, you don't ovulate anymore.
The pregnancy rate is less than 5% per cycle at age 43 years.
Actress Jennifer Aniston underwent multiple unsuccessful rounds of IVF (in vitro fertilization) during her journey to have children, revealing she tried for years, changed clinics, and experienced several failed cycles before stopping, but has expressed having "zero regrets" about her path. While the exact number isn't specified, she described it as a challenging, multi-year process involving numerous attempts.
Nicole Kidman
She underwent IVF to have her first daughter with Keith Urban. A surrogate carried their second daughter. She has honestly spoken about her struggles in conceiving at Australia's Who magazine in a 2008 interview she said: “I had tried and failed and failed and failed”.
Isha Ambani used IVF to conceive her twins, Aadiya Shakti and Krishna, because she and her husband faced difficulties conceiving naturally, and she openly shared her journey to help normalize IVF and reduce the stigma, highlighting it as a modern, positive way to build a family, just as her own mother, Nita Ambani, had done for her and her brother Akash. She emphasized that there's nothing to feel ashamed of and that IVF offers a chance for parenthood, mirroring her mother's experience with fertility struggles.
Although donor eggs from an egg bank will not carry your genes, the baby can still have some of your characteristics or physical traits. This is because the selection of the donor is based on the phenotypic characteristics of the recipient and the patient's blood group.
Deepika Padukone & Ranveer Singh
Deepika experienced multiple IVF failures before finally welcoming their precious baby girl. Deepika openly shared how incorporating holistic approaches such as Acupuncture, Ayurveda, and Yoga significantly supported her journey from infertility to parenthood.
The actress and singer made the admission in a candid interview with US magazine People. Jennifer told the magazine: "It was natural. We didn't do in vitro. Everyone assumed that, because we had twins."
Actress Jennifer Aniston has publicly shared that she was diagnosed with dyslexia in her 20s, a diagnosis that explained lifelong struggles with reading, writing, and retaining information, leading her to believe she wasn't smart until discovering the learning disorder. She discovered this during an eye exam, where she realized her eyes jumped words when reading, and the diagnosis helped her understand past difficulties, transforming her self-perception.
What Age Has Highest IVF Success Rate. Women under the age of 35 have the most success, but between the ages of 35 and 37 also have a 40.5% rate of success. Women between the ages of 38 and 40 have a lower success rate at 26t. 4% and over 40 has the lowest success rate at 8.2% according to CDC data.