Is TTC much harder in late 30s than in mid 30s?

[Anonymous]

Pregnant after 3 months of trying at 38 - miscarriage at 9 weeks.
Pregnant after 1 month of trying at 39 - miscarriage at 8 weeks.
Pregnant after 2 months of trying at 39 - healthy DS.

As posters have mentioned, it may be easy to conceive in your late 30's, but staying pregnant can be a problem. And miscarriages are not an experience that I'd want to go through again, which is why we're sticking with one child.
Also factor in your husband's age. My husband is a lot younger than me and I think it goes some way to explain why I get pregnant relatively easily. If your husband is your age or older then this may contribute to fertility issues (as I understand that male fertility declines after 35).

[Anonymous]

First of all, read the study before you make such accusations. If you had, you would see that these patients were not being treated at an infertility clinic. We are talking about all comers in the 30's and 40's. Obviously, patients in that age range at an INFERTILITY clinic are not going to have these success rates. But the point of this post was to provide evidence to the OP whose fertility status is unknown that age >X (37, 40, whatever) = infertility. You need to look at the population at large of mid-late 30's -- not just mid-late 30's at an infertility clinic (major selection bias).

I'm not the poster you were responding to, but I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I thought the study sample consisted of women undergoing IUI. Isn't that by definition a fertility treatment? Or are you saying that because they were lesbian couples with no male partner, they weren't really seeking "infertility" treatment in the same way as a male-female couple that has tried unsuccessfully to become pregnant. In other words, are you saying the lesbians presumably have normal fertility but need someone to perform the insemination, while most patients at a fertility clinic have sub-optimal fertility (if they didn't, they wouldn't be there in the first place)? Where they all lesbian couples in this study? Or was some proportion of the sample male-female couples with fertility issues?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

First of all, read the study before you make such accusations. If you had, you would see that these patients were not being treated at an infertility clinic. We are talking about all comers in the 30's and 40's. Obviously, patients in that age range at an INFERTILITY clinic are not going to have these success rates. But the point of this post was to provide evidence to the OP whose fertility status is unknown that age >X (37, 40, whatever) = infertility. You need to look at the population at large of mid-late 30's -- not just mid-late 30's at an infertility clinic (major selection bias).

I'm not the poster you were responding to, but I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I thought the study sample consisted of women undergoing IUI. Isn't that by definition a fertility treatment? Or are you saying that because they were lesbian couples with no male partner, they weren't really seeking "infertility" treatment in the same way as a male-female couple that has tried unsuccessfully to become pregnant. In other words, are you saying the lesbians presumably have normal fertility but need someone to perform the insemination, while most patients at a fertility clinic have sub-optimal fertility (if they didn't, they wouldn't be there in the first place)? Where they all lesbian couples in this study? Or was some proportion of the sample male-female couples with fertility issues?

Yes, that is exactly what I understood. (I am not the one who posted it.)

[Anonymous]

Yes, that is exactly what I understood. (I am not the one who posted it.)

So in other words, you sort of take the IUI out of the equation since that was just a "substitute" for having a male partner? If so, that would imply that 52% of women in the 40-45 age range will deliver a baby after 12 cycles of TTC. That seems really hard to believe. Maybe I'm still not getting it . . . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yes, that is exactly what I understood. (I am not the one who posted it.)

So in other words, you sort of take the IUI out of the equation since that was just a "substitute" for having a male partner? If so, that would imply that 52% of women in the 40-45 age range will deliver a baby after 12 cycles of TTC. That seems really hard to believe. Maybe I'm still not getting it . . . .

Yes, that is correct. Because you are dealing with a population that has no male partner and is not known to be infertile, the odds of conception and delivery are higher than in women in that age group who are being treated at an infertility clinic.

[Anonymous]

"If so, that would imply that 52% of women in the 40-45 age range will deliver a baby after 12 cycles of TTC. That seems really hard to believe."

Its absolutely ridiculous to believe, especially if you lump in the 43, 44, and 45 year olds with the 40 year olds. I've consulted with far too many REs (who, yes actually know the odds of success of fertile couples as well as those experiencing infertility) to buy it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"If so, that would imply that 52% of women in the 40-45 age range will deliver a baby after 12 cycles of TTC. That seems really hard to believe."

Its absolutely ridiculous to believe, especially if you lump in the 43, 44, and 45 year olds with the 40 year olds. I've consulted with far too many REs (who, yes actually know the odds of success of fertile couples as well as those experiencing infertility) to buy it.

I don't find it "absolutely ridiculous" to believe at all. It is a scientific study with actual results. I agree that the fertility rate for 43-45 year-olds will be much less, but the study DID group 40-year-olds in with them. I think it is perfectly reasonable to think that a relatively high percentage of 40-year-olds with no known fertility problems would conceive within 12 cycles.

[Anonymous]

PP again--just to note that I am not the one who posted it.

[Anonymous]

Also, the 40-45 group could contain 90% of 40-41 year olds and 10% of 42-45 year olds which would skew the results considerably.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, the 40-45 group could contain 90% of 40-41 year olds and 10% of 42-45 year olds which would skew the results considerably.

Exactly. Remember, they aren't saying that 52% of 40-year-olds, 52% of 41-year-olds, 52% of 42-year-olds, 52% of 43-year-olds, 52% of 44-year-olds, and 52% of 45-year-olds will conceive in 12 cycles. It is 52% of all these groups lumped together. To take a theoretical extreme, all the 40 or 41-year-olds could conceive and none of the older women, and those statistics could be completely accurate.

[Anonymous]

Even if you take out the 40+ women, I'm still amazed that 52% of 40 yrs olds will conceive a healthy pregnancy in one year!

Maybe I'm just amazed b/c unfortunately I seem to be beating those odds and I'm not even 40.

(No fertility issues, labwork is great, 3 healthy full-term pregnancies in my early to mid-thirties -all achieved on the 1st or 2nd try - and now after 12 perfectly-timed cycles, 2 with IUI, I've had nothing but 2 chemical pregnancies. I have a couple of months left before my 40th b'day.)

Not sure if that 52% stat has me feeling encouraged or even MORE frustrated . . . .

[Anonymous]

Just saw something on the news the other day about a women's fertility study--study showed that women's egg reserves diminish by 90 percent by mid-30s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:there may seem to be a bias on this forum but there is no doubt that fertility declines rapidly after 35.

Thank heavens for that or my "oops" at 38 might have been triplets!

The short answer is that there is NO WAY TO KNOW UNTIL YOU TRY. You cannot extrapolate from someone else's experience. I bought all the hype about how fertility declines after 35 and just assumed I would not be able to get pregnant right away. We knew lots and lots of people who needed help who were younger than we are and assumed we would, too. For career reasons, I did not want a child until I was 37. We started trying at 35 because we figured we'd go through the mandatory six months of trying, another year of fertility treatments, and then finally we would have a baby. We banked on it. I got pregnant on the first try at a really bad time career-wise. We also meant to stop at one and, as you can see, we didn't. Do not let people scare you into thinking you must try now. On the other hand, if you feel like you want to try know, don"t let me career-impact story (it definitely had an adverse one) scare you, either. I still work at the same job but think "ruining" my career was totally worth it, especially when the children are being wonderful to me (like they were earlier today).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there may seem to be a bias on this forum but there is no doubt that fertility declines rapidly after 35.

Thank heavens for that or my "oops" at 38 might have been triplets!

The short answer is that there is NO WAY TO KNOW UNTIL YOU TRY. You cannot extrapolate from someone else's experience. I bought all the hype about how fertility declines after 35 and just assumed I would not be able to get pregnant right away. We knew lots and lots of people who needed help who were younger than we are and assumed we would, too. For career reasons, I did not want a child until I was 37. We started trying at 35 because we figured we'd go through the mandatory six months of trying, another year of fertility treatments, and then finally we would have a baby. We banked on it. I got pregnant on the first try at a really bad time career-wise. We also meant to stop at one and, as you can see, we didn't. Do not let people scare you into thinking you must try now. On the other hand, if you feel like you want to try know, don"t let me career-impact story (it definitely had an adverse one) scare you, either. I still work at the same job but think "ruining" my career was totally worth it, especially when the children are being wonderful to me (like they were earlier today).

So when the kids are not being nice to you, you regret having them? nice.

[Anonymous]

Thank heavens for that or my "oops" at 38 might have been triplets!

The short answer is that there is NO WAY TO KNOW UNTIL YOU TRY. You cannot extrapolate from someone else's experience. I bought all the hype about how fertility declines after 35 and just assumed I would not be able to get pregnant right away. We knew lots and lots of people who needed help who were younger than we are and assumed we would, too. For career reasons, I did not want a child until I was 37. We started trying at 35 because we figured we'd go through the mandatory six months of trying, another year of fertility treatments, and then finally we would have a baby. We banked on it. I got pregnant on the first try at a really bad time career-wise. We also meant to stop at one and, as you can see, we didn't. Do not let people scare you into thinking you must try now. On the other hand, if you feel like you want to try know, don"t let me career-impact story (it definitely had an adverse one) scare you, either. I still work at the same job but think "ruining" my career was totally worth it, especially when the children are being wonderful to me (like they were earlier today).

Are we supposed to feel sorry for you that you didn't have age-related fertility problems, or should we just be repulsed by your smugness? You're so fertile that if you'd gotten pregnant younger, you would have had triplets - ha, ha, ha! That's just so cute!

Fertility declining with age is not "hype," it's fact.

Of course there's no way to predict whether this will happen to any one individual, but that doesn't make the statistics irrelevant or "hype." You CAN extrapolate from others' experiences if there are enough "others" to create a large representative sample of the population.