Planning to start a family in 2010?

Planning to start a family in 2010?

2010 - The start of a new decade and new beginnings for many. Is starting a family part of your plan for 2010? If so, congratulations on realising that starting a family deserves as much planning as your education, career and finances.

More women are delaying becoming pregnant and as fertility declines with age it is important to pay as much attention to your biological clock as you would to any potential life challenge. A fertile couple where the woman is 30 years old has a 22% chance of having a baby per month of trying, at 35 years old it has declined to 16% and by 40 there is only a 6% chance.

In particular, the chance of a having baby starts to drop dramatically in the mid 30’s. Why? Egg quantity and egg quality. The quantity of eggs a woman has will peak before she is even born. By birth she will have 1 million eggs, by puberty 300,000, and by her mid 30’s maybe 25,000 left. Although this sounds like a lot, the main issue is that women tend to ovulate their best eggs when they are younger. The older women get, the greater the chance of a genetic problem in the egg.

Dr Mary Birdsall, Medical Director at Fertility Associates in Auckland urges people to seek advice early. “If you have a known fertility issue or have concerns, it’s important to address it immediately. We would recommend seeking advice if you are 30 years old and have been trying to conceive for 12 months. If you are over 35 we would suggest seeing us after 6 months. Why? Because after 35 years the success rates of treatments like IVF also starts to decline with age. Fertility treatment has to work with the reality of your biological clock - we can’t turn back time. The chances of an IVF cycle being successful when a woman is 40 are half what they are when she is 30.

There are some very simple tests available. The Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) test for women is a blood test that indicates the number of eggs left in the ovaries. Male fertility, which contributes to about half of all conception issues, can be assessed by a sperm test.

The New Year is a perfect time to plan for how you’d like your life to look another year from now. If your picture involves a new baby there is help available for you plan for this with more certainty. Whether or not to have a family is a life-changing decision and one that every couple wants to be able to make consciously. Fertility Associates has been helping couples become families for over 20 years with over 9,500 babies born so far.

ENDS

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