Life can hinder family growth for people and couples for a variety of reasons. Whether it’s due to a lack of a spouse, a profession, income, housing, travel, or a lack of preparation, many realise that it’s simply not the appropriate time to have a child.
Occasionally, people find themselves attempting to conceive later in an age when it might be far more challenging.
The greatest chance for women to become pregnant is before the age of 30. As women age, it takes longer to conceive and their likelihood of becoming pregnant drops.
Here in this article, we will take a look at why does fertility decline as you age?
Factors Affecting Fertility in Women
Some factors influence fertility in women such as:
Biological Factors
Age and sex are two biological factors that have significant effects on fertility. The ability to have children is directly related to the woman’s age. With the onset of menstruation, a woman’s reproductive capabilities are fully realised, and she alone is capable of bearing children. Menopause marks the end of this phase of development.
Therefore, a woman’s biological limits to fertility coincide with the beginning of menstruation and menopause. Menarche, the onset of the first menstrual cycle, varies from one individual to the next and is affected by environmental, nutritional, and health factors.
Physiological Factors
Women’s fertile years are influenced by several physiological factors. These are the times in a woman’s reproductive cycle when she is infertile and cannot have children. A woman’s infertility might result from a variety of causes. When a girl gets married off at a young age, she often has to wait longer to have her first child than couples who wait until she is physically ready to do so.
Adolescent sterility describes this condition. Furthermore, there are times after giving birth when a woman cannot become pregnant again. Her infertility is just temporary. It takes a woman a few months to go back on her menstrual cycle, which is necessary for pregnancy. It has been shown that breastfeeding delays the delivery of a second child.
Primary sterility affects some couples. They could choose not to have children or be unable to conceive. When a couple is unable to have children for reasons other than their reproductive health, this is known as secondary sterility. Stillbirths and abortions, both planned and unplanned, can harm fertility.
Economic Factors
Urbanisation, parental employment, and general economic conditions all have significant impacts on birth rates.
Some of the economic factors influencing fertility are:
Urbanisation
When compared to life in the countryside, urbanisation has various effects on people’s fertility. Cities harm fertility. Reasons, why people leave their rural hometowns, include a shortage of affordable housing and a high cost of living.
The economic stability of a family is directly influenced by the breadwinner’s profession. Since they need additional hand on deck to help bring in extra cash, manual labourers tend to have large families. However, people in commerce, trade, and white-collar professions have low fertility rates.
Occupation
Fertility rates are lower in industrialised nations, which is consistent with the fact that most of their women work alongside their male counterparts. However, the fertility rate among farmers is significantly higher than that of the general population. Both farmers and agricultural labourers tend to have large families.
Economic Conditions
Fertility rates tend to be very sensitive to a country’s economic conditions. Low birth rates are correlated with high per capita income and good standards of life in industrialised nations. When faced with the enormous expenditure of raising and educating more children, most people choose to keep their current family size instead of expanding it. However, low-income families in industrialised nations tend to have several children.
This applies equally to the agricultural and industrial sectors in nations with low levels of development. When a kid begins contributing financially to the family at an early age, the expense of raising that child is far outweighed by the value to the family.
How Does Ageing Affect Older Women During Delivery?
To be over 40 does not necessarily hinder the efficiency of delivery. Research shows that pregnancy and delivery results for women over 40 are similar to those of younger women as long as they:
- have access to excellent prenatal care
- not suffering from chronic medical conditions
- attends frequent prenatal check-ups
- adopts a healthy way of living
- delivers the child at a prenatal clinic
This indicates that, for healthy women, conceiving after the age of 40 may not be any more harmful than conceiving earlier in life. However, the rate of caesarean births was higher among older women.
Risks of Fertility Decline with Age
Women who become pregnant later in age are more likely to experience problems. Over 40 pregnant women are more likely to have preeclampsia. Pregnancy later in age might potentially influence the fetus’s health.
Typically, older women have more health issues than younger women. For example, hypertension is more prevalent in elderly individuals. Pre-pregnancy hypertension might increase the likelihood of preeclampsia. However, research also indicates that older women without any health concerns might still have pregnancies that are challenging.
The risk associated with pregnancy with age increases over the age of 35. Also, older women are more likely to experience numerous pregnancies than younger women. The likelihood of delivering stillbirth child increases. Age increases the likelihood that the ovaries may release more than one egg every month.
Additionally, several fertility treatments improve the likelihood of having multiple children. Multiple pregnancies can be healthy, but they also raise the likelihood of premature delivery.
For healthy couples in their 20s and 30s, around one-fourth of women will become pregnant during any given menstrual cycle. Approximately 1 in 10 women will become pregnant every menstrual cycle by age 40. Similarly, a man’s fertility drops with age, albeit less reliably.
Lifestyle Changes for Infertility Treatment
It’s possible to live a somewhat unhealthy lifestyle in your twenties and yet get pregnant. But after you enter your mid-30s and beyond, maintaining consistently healthy lifestyle choices is crucial to protecting and promoting fertility.
As the amount and quality of your eggs decrease, it becomes more necessary to increase your healthy habits to ensure that you have done everything possible to assist your body’s reproductive system. A nutrient-dense diet, a moderate physical activity most days of the week, quitting smoking, and abstaining from alcohol are all crucial steps toward good fertility.
Obtaining a healthy body weight may be another crucial adjustment you must make. Due to their effects on estrogen levels and ovulation, which is the monthly release of an egg from one of your ovaries, being overweight or considerably underweight might make it more difficult to become pregnant.
Many women in their late 30s and early 40s are astonished to discover that achieving a healthy body weight is sometimes all that is required to restore regular ovulation and make conception viable.
Bottom Line
The infertility treatment chosen depends on the underlying cause. Surgical treatment of structural defects is one option, while hormone drugs are used to address other diseases (ovulation issues, thyroid conditions).
Therefore, you must understand your condition thoroughly before choosing an option. You can also get doctors’ opinions online and order any prescribed medication through a pharmacy online.
Unfortunately, infertility can cause a lot of emotional strain. You should see a doctor if you are above the age of 35 or if you have been trying to conceive for more than a year.
