What Is Geriatric Pregnancy? 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.
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. Historically, pregnancies at this age or older are considered at higher risk – for patient and fetus – for various reasons.
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.
Women over 35 are more likely to develop gestational diabetes or high blood pressure during pregnancy. Also, there's a higher chance for women in this age group to have underlying health problems, such as obesity or heart disease.
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.
Although women older than 35 years of age make up a small portion of all births6 in the United States each year, about nearly one-half of babies with Down syndrome are born to women in this age group.
Complications during pregnancy: Women older than age 35 have a higher risk for diabetes and high blood pressure during pregnancy. Older women are also more likely to be pregnant with multiples. Complications during delivery: Women in their 30s are more likely to need a cesarean section than younger women.
With age, your risk of early miscarriage goes up. At age 35, the chance is about 20%. By age 45, your chance is 80%.
At 35, most have a 15% to 20% chance of getting pregnant in a given month. That could mean a 78% chance of conceiving within the year. But 35 seems to be the point where fertility for people with ovaries does decline. "The most common reason is reduced egg quality," Dr.
Late preterm babies (babies who are born between 34 and 37 weeks of gestation) are less mature and developed than full-term babies. Hence, babies born at 35 weeks are at a higher risk of developing complications than full-term babies. One of the best ways to prevent preterm birth is with high-quality prenatal care.
6.9 percent in women age 35 to 37. 6.8 percent in women age 38 to 40. 5.1 percent in women age 41 to 42. 5.9 percent in women age 43 and above.
A “geriatric pregnancy” is an outdated, but still commonly used, term to describe pregnancy in individuals 35 years of age and older. The term “advanced maternal age” is the more recent term to describe pregnant individuals who are over the age of 35.
Lyudmila Belyavskaya, second wife of Russian actor Aleksandr Belyavsky, gave birth to her first child, daughter Alexandra, in Moscow, Russia, on August 28, 2003, at the age of 52, after a natural conception.
Geriatric pregnancy: Waiting later in life to have a baby.
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.
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 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.
The study found that pregnancy rates decreased progressively with increasing age of the recipient female patient 6. The cumulative pregnancy rate observed up to 12 insemination cycles was 74% for women younger than 31 years and decreased to 62% for women aged 31–35 years and to 54% for women older than 35 years 6.
There's no way to prevent Down syndrome. If you're at high risk of having a child with Down syndrome or you already have one child with Down syndrome, you may want to consult a genetic counselor before becoming pregnant. A genetic counselor can help you understand your chances of having a child with Down syndrome.
Fertility statistics suggest that for healthy women in their 20s and early 30s, the likelihood of getting pregnant during any single menstrual cycle is around 1 in 4. According to The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, by the time a woman reaches age 40, those probabilities drop to around 1 in 10.
You might be more financially stable and healthier
"Studies show that children of older mothers stay in the educational system longer, do better on standardized tests, and are more likely to go to college than their peers born to young moms," says Dr. Salber.