What is the best age for women to have successful pregnancy?
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ISLAMABAD- Just as getting pregnant at a very young age is considered risky for both the mother and the child, so is planning a pregnancy at an advanced age (above 35 years) as it can lead to health complications.
The biological clock is real and postponing parenthood to your 40s, say doctors, can cause serious health problems.
“Women are delivering healthy babies throughout their 30s and beyond. The age of 35 is simply an age that certain risks become more worthy of discussion,” says Dr Ritu Sethi, consultant, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Columbia Asia Hospital, Gurugram. “The biggest drawback of getting pregnant in your late 40s is it’s harder to get pregnant. Eggs supply decreases significantly with your age, and older eggs are more likely to have chromosomal problems, raising the risk of miscarriage and birth defects. 40-year-old women treated for infertility had a 25% chance of getting pregnant using their own eggs,” says Sethi.
Another option is to freeze your eggs. These eggs are frozen at a young age and can be thawed (defrozen) at a later age when the woman wants to plan a pregnancy, so that the effects of age do not come into play. But the flipside is that the treatment is quite costly and the patient can conceive only through IVF, which has low success rates.
Women are more likely to develop high BP problems and diabetes during pregnancy in their 40s. “Women older than 40 are more likely to deliver a low-birth-weight or preterm baby,” says Sethi. “At 40, the chance of conceiving within a year is about 40 to 50%, compared with a woman in her mid-30s, who has a 75% chance. By 43, a woman’s chance of pregnancy plummets to 1 or 2%,” she says.
Women are now opting for fertility treatments as chances for natural conception also decrease dramatically with age. Thus, couples resort to fertility treatments meant for both men and women. This initiative has proven to be fruitful, but this process is more cumbersome and complicated than the natural way of reproduction, with possibilities of unsatisfactory outcomes.
“Another option is to freeze your eggs. These eggs are frozen at a young age (so that ageing process is limited) and can be thawed (defrozen) at a later age when the woman wants to plan pregnancy, so that the effects of age do not come into play. But the flipside is that the treatment is quite costly and the patient can conceive only through in vitro fertilization (IVF), which again has low success rates,” says Dr Pooja Mehta, senior consultant, obstetrics and gynecology, Paras Hospitals, Gurugram.
The onus of having a child does not depend solely on women. With a booming population and a serious hike in expenses in the coming decades, it has become challenging to provide for a child in a big city, let alone have five or six children.
Ultimately, the right to give birth or to postpone a pregnancy or to not have children is entirely an individual’s choice. But for those who do want experience parenthood, however delayed, it is advisable to start thinking about it in your late 20s and plan your baby in the early 30s.
