How many eggs does a woman have at 40? By the time a woman reaches 40, she'll be down to about 18,000 (3% of her pre-birth egg supply). Although the chances of conception are lower, this does not mean it is impossible to conceive at this age.
At 40, approximately 40% of eggs will be genetically normal. By the age of 44, as little as 10-20% may be normal.
The rate of chromosomal abnormalities in eggs (and therefore also in embryos) increases significantly with advancing female age. At age 30 about 30% of eggs are chromosomally abnormal. By age 40 about 60% are abnormal and by 44 years old 90% are abnormal.
Women lose 90 per cent of the eggs in their ovaries before the age of 30, new research has shown. The mathematical model shows that the average woman has only 12 per cent of her eggs left by the age of 30 and only three per cent by the age of 40.
You are born with all the eggs you are ever going to have. You don't make any new eggs during your lifetime.
Fish Oil (Omega 3s): Omega 3s is a practical way to delay ovarian aging and can help to preserve fertility and encourage the production of higher quality eggs, especially for women over 40.
Age counts the most
The main problem encountered in the group of patients over 40 is that almost half of them (40%-45%) do not even reach the egg collection. That's why when talking about the chances doctors can offer to these patients, the only statistic that is really useful is life birth per started IVF cycle.
Doctors have tests to measure egg count.
There are two good ways to measure egg count: an antral follicle count and an AMH (anti-Müllerian hormone) test. During an antral follicle count, a doctor uses ultrasound to count the visible follicles.
Your ovaries also make important hormones for menstruation, pregnancy and other bodily functions. The usual age for egg production to stop, known as menopause, is around 51.
Your age affects the health of your eggs. Women reach the peak of their fertility at around age 24. After this age, egg quality slowly deteriorates until around age 37, and then deteriorates more rapidly until about age 42. After roughly age 42, fertility for most women basically falls off a cliff.
Unlike men, whose reproductive organs produce millions of fresh sperm on a daily basis, women are born with all the eggs that they will ever possess. Moreover, this number steadily declines as a woman ages: from one million eggs at birth to 300,000 by puberty, 25,000 by the age of 37 and 1,000 by the age of 51.
As you can see, even after age 43, the pregnancy rate using donor eggs remains excellent. The incidence of miscarriage will be around 15%. Also, the chances of having a baby with a chromosomal abnormality (e.g. Down syndrome) will be low.
The study published by the University of St. Andrews and Edinburgh University in Scotland found that women have lost 90 percent of their eggs by the time they are 30 years old, and only have about 3 percent remaining by the time they are 40.
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.
IVF can however help improve chances of successfully conceiving a healthy baby, even after 40 years. the procedures of egg retrieval and screening of embryos can help improve pregnancy outcomes.
As eggs, or Oocytes, are microscopic, you cannot really determine how many you have. However, the immature egg cells secrete a hormone call AMH (anti-Mullerian hormone) which can be measured and interpreted in the context of what is the average measure of this hormone for one's age group.
Checking a woman's anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) levels is one such test that can help towards giving an indication of what is going on from a medical perspective. The AMH or “egg timer” test, as some dub it, measures the blood's AMH levels, which reflect the number of small follicles in a woman's ovaries.
CoQ10 supplementation has been shown to improve egg quality, sperm quality, and pregnancy rates. Sperm and eggs both take about 90 days to develop. For best results, fertility specialists recommend taking CoQ10 and other fertility supplements for 90+ days if possible.
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%.
The U.S. National Birth Defects Prevention Study found that women greater than age 40 are at increased risk of having babies with multiple types of heart defects, genital abnormalities, skull deformities, and esophageal malformations.
At an average, your chances of getting pregnant at 40 with Natural IVF* is 9%, whilst your chances with Mild IVF* are 20%. However, it is important to note that your chance of IVF success is dependent on your own specific circumstances.