Anthea gave birth to her son, Nicholas Jay, on June 15, 2011. English actress Tina Malone gave birth to a baby girl in December 2013 at the age of 50, after IVF treatment. American singer Sophie B. Hawkins gave birth to a baby girl named Esther Ballantine Hawkins on July 7, 2015, at the age of 50, after IVF treatment.
“It's exceptionally rare for patients to get pregnant naturally at 50 or over 45. They make history,” said Dr. David Keefe, an obstetrician-gynecologist and fertility researcher at New York University. In part that's because around age 50, many women are entering menopause, after which egg harvesting isn't possible.
A 51-year-old mother just gave her daughter a major gift by giving birth to her baby. Julie Loving acted as the gestational surrogate for her daughter, Breanna Lockwood. CBS News spoke to Loving and Lockwood last month, as the women prepared to welcome Lockwood's daughter into the world.
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.
That's because after age 45, a woman's likelihood of getting pregnant naturally is less than 4%, and that number plummets to 1% once she hits 50, he said. But a mom's chances of conception bump up to between 65% and 85% if undergoing IVF treatment with youthful, viable eggs.
The end of reproductive years is characterized by the cessation of menstrual periods and is known as the frequency of anovulation cycles rose. Although pregnancy after menopause is very rare, it can lead to vaginal bleeding like pregnancy in reproductive years.
Pregnancy after age 45 years is infrequent and the mother and baby should be considered as a high risk. There is a greater incidence of spontaneous abortion, gestational trophoblastic disease and chromosomal abnormalities in the fetus.
South Floridian Carolyn Aronson was 54 when she gave birth to her now 10-month-old daughter, Aliya.
A remarkable 20 years after freezing her ovary, a 46-year-old Israeli woman defrosted part of it, reversed her menopause, got pregnant without IVF, and has now given birth to a healthy baby girl. She has named her new daughter Eshkar, a word from the Bible that means gift.
While it's not impossible to become pregnant naturally at 50, it is very rare. Women are born with all of the eggs they will ever have. As you get older, you have fewer eggs, and they are more likely to have abnormalities. Most women who get pregnant after 50 use donor eggs.
How many eggs does a woman have at 50? By the age of 50, you may still have around 1,000 eggs in your ovaries but they may not be healthy enough to start a pregnancy. Most women hit menopause between the ages of 45 and 55 years and that's when the reproductive activity completely shuts down.
At the age of 25 years, statistics show that 4.5% of females are unable to conceive naturally. At 38 years, the figure is 20%, rising to 50% at 41 years, nearly 90% at 45 years, and almost 100% at 50 years. Researchers based these figures on data from more than 58,000 women.
As a woman ages, the quality and quantity of her eggs continually decline. A woman in her 50s could potentially still get pregnant, but the only way that could happen would be through a donor egg and in vitro fertilization, and even then the chances of conceiving are very slim.
Guys can father a child at any age, right? Well, not exactly. While it's true men continue to produce sperm into old age, it doesn't mean they'll be fertile at 50. And just as a woman's chances of getting pregnant start to decline in her mid-30s, so does a man's fertility.
Brazilian television star Claudia Raia says she got the surprise of her life when she discovered she was pregnant at 55. At the time, Raia believed she was in menopause, which happens around age 51, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
There's no maximum age that stops a man from being able to have a baby. You can become a father long into your older years, but there are risks.
Stopping contraception
All women can stop using contraception at the age of 55 as getting pregnant naturally after this is very rare. For safety reasons, women are advised to stop the combined pill at 50 and change to a progestogen-only pill or other method of contraception.
Women do not remain fertile until menopause. The average age for menopause is 51, but most women become unable to have a successful pregnancy sometime in their mid-40s. These percentages are true for natural conception as well as conception using fertility treatment, including in vitro fertilization (IVF).
You'll be subjected to more tests if you get pregnant when you're older. Your doctor will talk to you about the risks, which include having a baby with low birth weight, issues with the placenta, high blood pressure, miscarriage, or stillbirth. Half of all pregnancies in women over 45 end in miscarriage.
Male fertility generally starts to reduce around age 40 to 45 years when sperm quality decreases. Increasing male age reduces the overall chances of pregnancy and increases time to pregnancy (the number of menstrual cycles it takes to become pregnant) and the risk of miscarriage and fetal death.