According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the “best reproductive years” are in your twenties. By the age of 30, a healthy, fertile female has a 20% chance of getting pregnant each month of trying to conceive. By age 40, someone has about a 5% chance of getting pregnant each month.
A pregnancy that has no maternal or foetal complications is considered to be a low risk pregnancy. Most pregnancy complications can easily be detected and prevented with routine prenatal care.
Geriatric pregnancy is a rarely used term for having a baby when you're 35 or older. Rest assured, most healthy women who get pregnant after age 35 and even into their 40s have healthy babies.
But as people get older, they face an increased risk of medical issues that can potentially complicate their pregnancy. While delivering at age 35 and older is officially considered “advanced maternal age,” Dr. Kalish notes that in reality, there's no “magic number” for being at-risk for complications.
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). However, 80% of babies with Down syndrome are born to women under age 35 years.
Older women are more likely to miscarry or have a stillbirth. They have a greater chance of developing gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and of delivering a baby who is very small. Then there can be problems with labor, resulting in a higher chance of cesarean birth.
Women who become pregnant in their 30s and early 40s can have safe, healthy pregnancies, says Ellie Ragsdale, MD, director of fetal intervention at UH Cleveland Medical Center. But they do face a higher risk of some problems.
While it may take a bit longer to get pregnant if you're 35 or older, the average time it takes to conceive is still high. Women under 25 have a 25 percent chance of conceiving per cycle, compared to 15 percent among women between the ages of 35 to 39 (the rate drops to 5 percent by the age of 40).
Causes of High Risk Pregnancy
Lifestyle: Alcohol consumption, smoking and use of illegal drugs. Maternal age: Pregnancy at 38 years or above. Underlying condition: Diabetes, high blood pressure, anaemia (low oxygen carrying haemoglobin levels in blood), epilepsy (neurological disorder), etc.
A low risk pregnancy is defined as: Being pregnant with only one baby, not twins or triplets. The baby is growing normally and is in an anterior, or head down position. You have been healthy throughout the pregnancy and have shown no signs of medical or obstetric conditions.
High blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, epilepsy, thyroid disease, heart or blood disorders, poorly controlled asthma, and infections can increase pregnancy risks. Pregnancy complications. Various complications that develop during pregnancy can pose risks.
Peak male fertility is around 25-29 years old. Sperm quality begins to decline at 30. At 45, men begin to experience a significant decrease in semen volume. Older men can also take longer to conceive a child.
If you are thinking about having a baby in your late thirties or early forties, you are not alone. Women ages 35-45 are increasingly becoming first-time moms. And most healthy women in this age group have healthy pregnancies, births and babies.
As we age, women can have a harder time getting pregnant at all and a higher chance of conceiving with an abnormal egg, which could result in a miscarriage or a baby with a chromosomal abnormality such as 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.
Folic acid is a vitamin that every cell in your body needs for healthy growth and development. Taking folic acid before and during early pregnancy can help prevent birth defects in your baby's brain and spine called neural tube defects and birth defects in your baby's mouth called cleft lip and cleft palate.
Definition of geriatric pregnancy
We define advanced maternal age (formerly geriatric pregnancy) as those who are 35 years or older at their estimated delivery date.
How Many Babies are Born with Down Syndrome? Down syndrome remains the most common chromosomal condition diagnosed in the United States. Each year, about 6,000 babies born in the United States have Down syndrome. This means that Down syndrome occurs in about 1 in every 700 babies.
Current supplementation policies designed to prevent neural tube defects may incidentally prevent Down's syndrome, provided a sufficiently high dose of folic acid is used.
As men age, their risk of fathering a child with Down syndrome may increase—the older the man, the more likely that the process of spermatogenesis, or sperm production will go awry, leading to sperm that contain errors like an extra chromosome.
Down syndrome, which arises from a chromosome defect, is likely to have a direct link with the increase in stress levels seen in couples during the time of conception, say Surekha Ramachandran, founder of Down Syndrome Federation of India, who has been studying about the same ever since her daughter was diagnosed with ...
After age 35, there's a higher risk of pregnancy-related complications that might lead to a C-section delivery. The risk of chromosomal conditions is higher. Babies born to older mothers have a higher risk of certain chromosomal conditions, such as Down syndrome. The risk of pregnancy loss is higher.