Impact of Age on Fertility and Egg Quality by IVF Specialist in Delhi
It is a biological fact that with the increase of age in men and women, their chances of having children decreases potentially. Therefore, the exact time when your age starts affecting your fertility can vary among individuals.
There are numerous cases where people have a healthy baby in their late 30s and early 40s, but the majority of people are not lucky in this case. Age is the single biggest factor that affects fertility in women, however, in the case of men, fertility decline is more subtle, but it does happen.
Across the population, women below the age of 35 and men below the age of 40 have a considerably better chance of getting pregnant than older people. This is true for natural pregnancies and the ones conceived through assisted reproductive treatments. It is always recommended to consult a doctor when you are having doubts regarding your fertility.
Impact of age on women
As per IVF specialist in Delhi a lot of factors can get in between people trying to start a family when they decide at a later stage of life when it gets more challenging to get pregnant. For women, the easiest time to get pregnant is before the age of 30 as with the increase in age, the time taken to conceive a child also increases and the chances of getting pregnant tend to decrease. Some of the reasons for the rise of time in conceiving a child are:
- Women are most fertile before the age of 30 when the conceiving time required is the least.
- After the age of 30, the fertility of women starts to decrease.
- By the age of 35, it starts to decrease even more significantly.
- When a woman attains the age of 40, her chance of getting pregnant is half of what it was when she was 30.
Effect of age on eggs
A woman is typically born with all the eggs she will ever have, and the number and quality of these eggs start to decrease with time. This is the reason why the chances of getting pregnant also get reduced with age.
In the case of men, the quality of sperm produced by them declines after the age of 40. The motility and count of sperm in men continuously deteriorates from the age of 20 to 80. Therefore, the chances of having a baby for men start to decrease after the age of 40.
Impact of age on men
There are rare examples of men fathering children at old ages where the fact is that to conceive a child with a male partner of age more than 40 is comparatively harder than with men below the age of 30. In the case of both the male and female being below 25, the time taken to get pregnant is 5 months, whereas if the male partner is above 40, it takes around 2 years.
Pregnancy and birth risks
With the increase in the age of the parents, the risk of having an unhealthy baby also gets hiked. The quality of eggs and sperm decline with age, which might lead to certain birth defects and genetic abnormalities as suggested by IVF specialist in Delhi. Most cases of birth ailments are found in people who get pregnant after the age of 40. It is said that the risk of having a baby with genetic abnormalities is one in 400 for a woman aged 30 and one in 100 for a woman aged 40. These risks and chances of miscarriage hike with the increase in the age of the parents.