Over 35 – Scared You’ve Waited Too Long?
How Many Eggs Do You Have?
Women are born with all the eggs they are ever going to have. This, I already knew. But exactly how many? Would you believe 1 to 2 million? But by the time you reach puberty, you’re down to between 200 and 400-thousand. Every month you lose about 1 thousand eggs, but only one matures and becomes released – unless medical technology intervenes.
Age and Fertility
This startling look at how a woman’s fertility steadily declines as she ages was part of a presentation given by Dr. Mark Trolice at the Paths to Parenthood Conference in Orlando. Dr. Trolice is the founder of the non-profit Fertile Dreams. I was there also to speak on the mind-body approach to infertility.
Dr. Trolice’s focus was on the over-35 woman who is trying to conceive, and apparently fighting an up-hill battle, because her statistics are heading in the opposite direction. Women start seeing their fertility decline around age 33, even more sharply around 35, with a decline in both quantity and quality of their eggs. Even if an over-35 woman produces plenty of eggs, those eggs also contain increasing numbers of chromosomal defects, which lead to higher chance of miscarriage. You can find out your fertility health (meaning your number and possible quality of your eggs) by having your FSH tested, and in recent years, the advent of the AMH test.
Even though by now this news may be familiar to you, I see clients in my office every day who had no idea their fertility was declining. It’s hard for a fit, healthy, young-looking woman of 38 or 42 who looks great on the outside, to understand why something is aging so rapidly – unseen – inside her body.
My Question For You
In a future post, I will discuss the amazing success stories of women over 35 who have conceived by IVF or by using donor egg. But for now, my question for you is: Was this explained to you? When? By whom? Or was it never mentioned to you that the clock was ticking on your fertility? I want to know why this isn’t talked about much more, and much earlier.
That’s what I want to know. What are your thoughts?
