Sue Radford and fertility over 35

[WonderingAboutStuff]

Just been watching this family lately on YouTube and I was confused - sue Radford is 45? Yet has zero it seems issues getting pregnant is this very unusual ?

All I read is how over 35 it’s difficult to conceive ? And if you do miscarriage or problems are common but here is someone who seems to have very few issues is she a one off or is current advice around fertility out of date I’m so confused

Well statistically it gets harder, but throughout history women have had babies with no assistance throughout their forties and sometimes into early fifties. Because not all bodies are the same.

I had my first child at 35 then went on to conceive another healthy 3. My last child was born when I was 42! A lot of my friends are mature mums too!

Both mine were conceived over 35 (last one at 40) with zero issues. My mum's family are Catholic and I have loads of relatives born when their mums were over 40. My great gran had her last at 46, plus my gran and her sister both had their last in their 40s.

Problem is, you don't know if you will or won't have issues.

So a lot of births to ‘older’ mums over 35 are natural conceptions too as I had obviously wrongly assumed that they were maybe ivf ?
I’m just quite surprised as I had no idea I’ve had the number 35 said so many times and maybe it’s not such a worry ?

My boyfriends mother has 9 children, they were all removed one after the other from her care and so she would just have another. My boyfriend was born when she was 49 and his brother when she was 53. They are the 2 youngest.

If you have had previous children then you know that you are capable of pregnancy and also women who have had children tend to stay fertile for longer.

If you only start trying at 35, are unsucessful for a couple years, then start checking for problems, you only have a short window for IVF if you realise there is a problem. as a lot of clinics will not accept women over 40 (or at least not with their own eggs)

So a lot of births to ‘older’ mums over 35 are natural conceptions too as I had obviously wrongly assumed that they were maybe ivf ?

Definitely not IVF in the examples I gave. With both of mine we only had unprotected sex once that cycle. I'm now 43 and we're really careful because everything is still clockwork and with the world in it's current state, I don't fancy a 3rd.

Do you understand the difference between statistical likelihoods and individuals, OP? Because it might be a worry or it might not - no-one can tell you here. But statistically it gets more of a worry after 35.
Of course there are loads of natural births after 35 - IVF has only been around a short time and women had late babies before there was any kind of assistance. My own mother was 42 when she had me - in 1955.

Lots of women of my grandmothers’ generation had their 5, 6, 7th child in their 40s.

I had my last at 43. My two maternal great grandmothers both had babies at 48. I reckon I could have got pregnant at 48 (only started menopause in the last couple of years, am 55).

A friend of mine went into menopause at 37.

It averages out I suppose. But when you are 34 you have no way of knowing whether you will be someone whose fertility will abruptly decline at 35 or whether you are someone who has years to go.

Best to err on the side of caution.

Well it's not quite as clear cut as 35 being a literal cliff of fertility :

But also a sample size of one is hardly evidence against a general claim!

@giletrouge

Do you understand the difference between statistical likelihoods and individuals, OP? Because it might be a worry or it might not - no-one can tell you here. But statistically it gets more of a worry after 35. Of course there are loads of natural births after 35 - IVF has only been around a short time and women had late babies before there was any kind of assistance. My own mother was 42 when she had me - in 1955.

This 👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼

I also wrongly thought my fertility would fall off a cliff once I got over 30, or maybe 32, certainly by 35. Wrong!!

It's different for every women though the risks are higher as you get older. I guess she was just lucky. She is done having kids now though.

WonderingAboutStuff the risk of complications increase more steeply after 35 - both risks to the mother of pregnancy complications and needing interventions during birth, and risk of chromosomal abnormality in the child. The risk of a multiple pregnancy (high risk to both mother and foetuses in itself) also increases. After 40 the risk of miscarriage increases significantly.

Fertility decreases too, but it's the risk of complications that's often more significant.

In a dry, statistical, way it's obviously risky to wait to have your first til after 35 as most people don't know their own fertility status until they start trying to conceive.

What's new on a population level isn't having babies over 40 but having first babies over 35/40 as a general trend rather than that being fairly unusual.

Can I ask how old you are OP?

Women are born with with all their egg cells (actually, there is some scientific evidence that can possibly produce new egg cells from stom cells in the ovaries but it is true that most of the egg cells are present from birth). Obviously the older an egg cell is, the higher the risk of genetic defects or the egg not being healthy enough to be viable so fertility declines with age. However, if you are constantly pregnant like Sue Radford, you will have released less of your finite supply of eggs over your lifetime so have a larger egg reserve in your forties. Possibly. As is often the case, scientific studies show contradictory results...

I conceived easily at 40, almost 41.

Fertility declines over 35 but is still very much there! Those that have fertility issues usually will have them at any age.

I think fertility is one of those things that is hard to gauge really .Sue Radford is obviously very fertile! Some women may find it hard to conceive over 35 ,but again some may not. Maybe think about possibly freezing your eggs if you are concerned?

There's a misconception that fertility suddenly falls off a cliff at 35. That's because ages are normally grouped with 35 as a boundary, e.g. 29-34 and 35-40. Fertility declines steadily throughout a woman's 30s, but because they go into a new 'category' at 35 it looks like there's a big drop.

I think it's obvious riskier trying to start a family later, in that women stop being able to conceive at different ages and no-one knows when that will be, but I don't think it's anywhere near as difficult for most people as the media like to make out. Of course, it's also impossible to tell whether some 'older' women who struggle would have trouble conceiving at 23!

Society berates women for having children they can't afford or at a time of less financial/emotional stability but then criticise and scare women for having a family later, when they are more settled.

The 300-year-old fertility statistics still in use today

"The data on which that statistic is based is from 1700s France. They put together all these church birth records and then came up with these statistics about how likely it was [someone would] get pregnant after certain ages."

These are women who had no access to modern healthcare, nutrition or even electricity. Why would any researcher think they can tell us something useful about modern-day fertility?

Well, actually, they do have one big advantage. They weren't using effective methods of birth control.
...

The main problem with the historic data, in James's view, is that the women may not have been trying to conceive.

Indeed, they may have been actively trying to avoid becoming pregnant. They may not even have had intercourse.
...
Another finding of the Dunson study was that, while fertility declines with age, it does not appear to do so as quickly as we have been led to believe.

Among women aged 27-34, the study showed that 86% will have conceived within a year of trying. So the 82% figure for women aged 35 to 39 is only a little lower.

....
After that, the picture is a little less clear.

"It would appear from the limited and poor quality data that we have that that rate falls significantly [at 40].
..
And, he adds, there is evidence that female fertility is improving.

This is quite a good article on the topic: www.google.com.au/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/hard-evidence-does-fertility-really-drop-off-a-cliff-at-35-29113

I think the takeaway message is ideally you should try to have a baby by your early thirties because if there are fertility problems, IVF particularly is less successful at 35+. You don’t know if you don’t try a lot of the time.

If no fertility problems, age 35+ isn’t the edge of a steep cliff of fertility decline it’s made out to be. Anecdotally, my great gran had her seventh child at 46 in the 1930’s and a work colleague naturally had her fifth at 49.

It will obviously become harder to conceive as you age but it's not there's anything sudden that happens at 35 specifically.

I know quite a few people who have conceived without intervention well into their forties. My grandfather's youngest sibling was born when his mother was 52!

I’m 38, 39 in 6 months time