You Can Get Pregnant Later Than You Think!
Society scares women into thinking their uterus is a ticking time bomb. Only, instead of a pile of rubble and ash, you’re left with dried up eggs and doomed to die old and alone.
There’s this popular notion, often perpetuated by the media, that a woman only has until 35 before her fertility rates plummet, and once she hits 40, forget about it!
This messaging is everywhere! A perfect example is Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s book, Creating a Life, which basically told women to have children while they’re young or risk having nothing.
It’s this notion that supports the multibillion-dollar fertility industry. I mean let’s be real, if you’re an adult woman over the age of 25 with no kids, chances are you’ve been harassed and bombarded with propaganda urging you to have children “before it’s too late.” Well, I’m here to debunk that ridiculous, ill substantiated myth!
In fact, there are countless women debunking this myth.
My mother had me at 39. There have been moments throughout my life when peers have laughed and gawked over my mother’s age. Some have even gone as far as to call my mom “old as shit.” This only reconfirms the stigma society has placed on a woman’s body and its functions, which further promotes a negative and reckless depiction of the female overall.
The truth is, we’ve been getting our fertility advice from unreliable sources for years. This is in-part an example of the media’s failure to properly interpret and report scientific data.
What are the facts?
It’s been widely cited that one in three women, ages 35–39, won’t become pregnant after a year of trying. This fact is heavily based on an article published in the journal, Human Reproduction…that got its data from French Census records from the 16th century. Which basically means we’ve all been taking fertility advice from statistics that existed before electricity, fertility treatments, hell even basic antibiotics! To make your jaw drop even more, there aren’t many studies on female age and natural fertility that includes women born in the 20th century.
It’s also been widely believed that women under 30 have about a 20 percent chance of getting pregnant naturally each month and by the age of 40, that chance drops to 5 percent. HA! Check this out: A study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology found that the fertility of women in their late 20s and early 30s was almost identical. For example, a healthy 27-year-old woman has an 86 percent chance of getting pregnant within a year. By 37, her chances are 82 percent.
It’s true that the risk of miscarriages increases in your 40s and the chances of having a baby with birth defects double…from .5 percent to 1 percent.
Generations of women have planned their entire lives around the fear that they have to hurry and have children. The egg freezing industry preys on this fear. Here’s what they don’t tell you:
- For women of all ages, the chance of one frozen egg yielding a baby in the future is only 2 to 12 percent. For $20,000+ I’m going to need a higher guarantee!
- According to Penn Medicine, only 1 to 2 percent of babies born each year in the U.S. are a result of IVF.
- In fact, majority of women who freeze their eggs don’t end up using them because, that’s right you guessed it: you can get pregnant later than you think!
All in all, the realities of fertility aren’t as scary or dramatic as we’ve been led to believe. But don’t get me wrong, I have little desire to nurse a newborn in my 40s, deal with the unpredictable hormones of a teenager in my 50s, or try to keep up with a 20 year old in my 60s. But I can rest assured with knowing if I choose to do so, it’s ok. Whether you decide to have kids in your 20s, 30s, or 40s it’s your body and it’s far more powerful than you know. So live your life out loud and don’t stress!
