Is infertility on the rise, or does it just feel like it?

[ShadowPuppets]

Posting in chat, not AIBU and especially not the Infertility board because I’m not trying to be a twat, I’m genuinely wondering.

I was talking to my mum today and mentioned a good friend of mine who has sadly had an MC. My mum (who is lovely, but one of those women who falls pregnant in the perfectly socially acceptable way - with minimal fuss, when you want a baby, never before and never after) said ‘I do wonder why there’s so much of this nowadays - never used to happen when I was trying for babies’.

Mum conceived her kids on cycle 1 (me) and cycle 2 (my sister) but swears she never heard of people trying for 6m+ back in the day. Whereas all the people I know have tried for months before getting a BFP…

For context, she’s talking about late 80s - early 90s and I don’t think she means it maliciously but her take is - when she was having babies, people generally fell pregnant within a couple of cycles. There were miscarriages but generally people fell pregnant again quite quickly, and those who didn’t were in a small percentage - maybe 10% of their friends who never got pregnant and never had kids.

I feel a bit defensive of this because I’m a 33 year old woman with 2 kids but DH and I probably have about 8 couples as friends out of maybe 20 who are struggling to conceive or going through IVF or struggling with recurrent miscarriage.

I guess what I’m asking is, is infertility and miscarriage more of an issue nowadays, or is it just that people are talking about it more? I’d like to go back to my mum with the latter but I don’t know if that’s true.

I think people are more open about it, we have access to the internet so can find the statistics and women are trying at an older age on average.

People are older when they start ttc these days, and infertility and miscarriage wasn't talked about much in the past.

My mum took 5 years to get pregnant with her first baby, then a stillbirth, then 4 years each between my siblings. Not for lack of trying! It wasn't until I had my miscarriage that my grandma told me she'd had as many miscarriages as she had children (5)! I think another factor is that we know so early now that we've fallen pregnant when really our parents wouldn't have known until 6-8 weeks. So a lot of early miscarriages would have been missed completely and therefore not recorded anywhere.

Interesting thread.

Remember back then they didn’t have early pregnancy tests - you had to go to the GP who would make you wait to miss I think 2 periods before doing a blood test. So ‘chemical pregnancies’ and early miscarriages were never picked up in many cases.

People also have children much later now so more likely to struggle due to age, not infertility per se.

That said I think we are less fertile. Men are producing less and less sperm. I think with women it’s tied into obesity which is linked with PCOS, hormone imbalances, irregular cycles etc

People are TTC a decade later than they used to; biologically and chemically causes issues.

Bad diets, bad nutrition.. then there is the thing.

People got married and settled much earlier.
The risk of miscarriage is lower the younger you are, and fertility is also better the younger you are.

Also in the past people didnt talk much about this.

The pregnancy tests were not as good, so you couldn't find out 4 days before your period whether you were pregnant or not- very early miscarriages/ chemical pregnancies were prob just a ' late period'.

Lots of reasons really.

People didn't talk about it "back in the day". I never told my mum or mil about miscarriage. I didn't want anyone poo-pooing my loss. I coped quite well with it really but I'm shocked how much I see a child of that age and wonder about my precious baby. If it's not easy to talk about now, it would have been worse 30 plus years ago.

Oh trust me they did have trouble back then but you didn’t say!

And people were having them a lot younger, so less issues in that sense.

We only conceived when we were drinking spring water. As soon as we went back on to tap water we never conceived again. So DH believes it's something in the tap water! 🤔

People were generally healthier in the 80s. Obesity has spiked since then and a standard diet has changed massively and is now highly processed and inflammatory which can effect conditions such as PCOs to reduce the chances of pregnancy. Other then this, then yes as pp says, women are delaying conception and we know that male fertility is reducing year on year too, possibly because of the health issues above.

As for what your mum says. It is likely that miscarriage was a more taboo subject then and lots of people didn't mention their struggles. I know of two couples, my husbands grandparents and my aunt and uncle who struggled to conceive that was the 60s and 80s so they certainly existed. My father in law was adopted for that reason.

People talk about it more now, and people are also waiting atleast a decade longer to TTC which results in higher chance or miscarriage or problems conceiving. Not for everyone obviously, but it’s just a fact that egg quality declines with age.

Male factor infertility is actually on the rise, have a Google, but miscarriages have always happened they just weren’t talked about. Miscarriage rates go up as women age, so women meeting partners and trying for babies later in life are more likely to have one than if they’d started trying when younger.

The average age women have their kids has gone up a lot in the last 30-40 years. In the longer past there was no contraception so women would have continued to get pregnant and miscarry throughout their lives, but I guess in the 80s women would have had their kids younger and then been on contraception so avoiding this. There have always been couples who struggle to conceive though, and IVF wasn’t an option then.

I think age is a big factor, that's going to make a massive difference to likelihood of TTC issues or losses. Also think that people were less open about this topic.

Women are having babies much much later now which results in more miscarriages (eggs not as good quality as you get older) and more need for IVF.

Miscarriages weren't talked about in the past so no one would know how many miscarriages a women had had compared to how many babies she'd had. A women would just be know as 'barren' if it was obvious to others that she hadn't been able to have children.

You couldn't just buy home pregnancy tests in the supermarket, so women didn't necessarily know they were pregnant as early as we do now. So a lot more women will know now that they had a very early loss, whereas before it might have just been put down to a 'late' period. I only realised recently that this is probably the case for Rizzo in Grease, who had a pregnancy scare.

I think you've asked a very intersting question.

It's clear from the official statistics that there is a global decrease in birthrates - I just always assumed that people were deliberately having less children but perhaps this isn't so. Perhaps it's not choice but circumstance.

Keinfelter (sp?) syndrome is thought to affect 1 in 500 males.
Causes infertility.
Not routinely tested for.
Chlamydia is symptomless and causes infertility in women and is very common.
Women - and men - are having children later in life.
Women's fertility falls off a cliff after 35.
Men may be able to impregnate women in their mid/old age but their sperm will be poor quality.
Take your pick.

Oh, and the obesity epidemic of course

Women in third world countries are also having less children and I don't think that can be put down to mothers being older.

It was talked about far less.

MIL’s sister and her husband “decided” not to have children. She only revealed after she started developing dementia that they’d actually tried for a family for many years.

Miscarriage also wasn’t talked about. It wasn’t until I had a MC that MIL told me that she’d had several. After my second she told me she’d had 7 before having DH and a further 5 between him and BIL.

No, but the pope saying condoms are OK now might have something to do with it!

My mum said this when I was worried about miscarriage with DS (and subsequently went on to have 3 miscarriages after he was born healthy). And then she started talking with her friends about my (irrational, she said) worries with her friends and learned out of 5 of them, 3 had had losses.

They just didn't speak about it when she was of child bearing age apparently. Very hush hush.

These are really interesting points, thank you.

I’d thought about increased maternal age and obesity but in my very limited sample of friends no one seems to be obese and we’re talking under the age of 35 so wasn’t thinking of that as a factor.

Up until now I’ve chalked it up to ‘people didn’t talk about it as much’ but DM’s comments made me wonder if there’s other factors at play.

I'm an early 70s child my Mum took 3/4 cycles with me and siblings.

You didn't go to the Drs until you had missed 3 periods!

They were 25 and 28 when they started trying and had been married at least 5 years then saving up as my Mum would have to give up work.

Sex outside of marriage was still a huge taboo as was discussing miscarriage etc.

I think we just hear about it more/constantly

Actually, reading your OP again and what your mum said about everyone she knew getting pregnant quickly, in a roundabout way I think some of it could be down to the cost of housing... (bear with me 😂)

So my parents had me and my brother in their early 20s (1980s) They bought a 3 bed, detached house on one wage (which was the wage of an entry level, unskilled wage, so not a big wage at all). That would be unthinkable now, and a lot of the reason people wait longer to have children is to be in a position career wise first to be able to afford a house on two wages.

Sooo... Thinking about when people first get together and how much sex they have. For my husband and I it was ALL the time. Then, as you've been together longer it dwindles a bit (yeah, yeah, I'm sure some will disagree!) But 100% for us, we were at it like rabbits for the first 2-3 years, and then when we actually came to try to conceive at around 7 years in, it was a bit of a chore! So in the past people got married a lot earlier on in their relationship than they do today, and (most) people now will be using contraception for a lot longer from the beginning of their relationship. And I do think that 'have more sex' is often the first bit of advice when people with fertility problems first see their GP.

So that's my theory as one part of it 😄. We needed IVF for unexplained infertility, and I do wonder if we would have fallen pregnant naturally if we hadn't used protection in the first 3 years when we were having sex a least daily, often more.

To summarise that epic waffle... People wait longer to have babies to establish a career and buy a house, by which time the sex isn't as frequent.