Can you can pregnant with first baby around 40+?

[TheP0]

So a cousin is ttc her first child and is 40.. She will be 41. She's worried (and so am i for her) about missing the chance and boat to have a baby. Is it really possible at that age or not? She said that doctors say at 40 you're eggs are almost gone and there's hardly any left.

All it states on the internet is that a woman isn't very much fertile once she hits 35 so it's becoming worrisome.

Sorry English isn't first language but i tried!
Thank you!

I got pregnant with my first at 36 and had her at 37 (six month of trying). I’m currently pregnant with number two at 39 and I am due when he’s is 40 (pregnant first month of ttc) I’ve got a Normal BMI, try to eat healthily and exercise.

The trouble is your friend won’t know until she tries. I would advise he getting an ovulation kit so she can see when she is ovulating

Yes of course you can, but chances are less.
I personally know 2 couple who married later in life and had a child on the far side of 40.

I am amazed that the figure is as low as 5% without medical intervention. I had my first at 43, had stopped using contraception 6 months earlier and wasn’t actively trying to get pregnant (as in monitoring my fertility or anything like that), just told my DH ‘we’d see what happens’ as he was much keener than me .

I found out i was pregnant end of July and i was 39, turned 40 last month. I always thought i was infertile cos of crazy periods and had 5 yrs unprotected sex and voila here i am with healthy so far pregnancy.
Due in march.. Anything is possible!

My Grandmother had her first baby at 16, and her last at 46. My friend's daughter always wanted children and was 42 when she finally became pregnant and had a gorgeous baby boy.

I'm 50 with a 9 year old. I had fertility treatment for my now 25 and 17 DDs and then hit 40 and suddenly became fertile.

Your English is good, but I’m surprised that you don’t know anyone who had their first baby after 40. Especially these days when women are delaying starting families till later. FWIW, DH and I are first babies born to mums age 41 and 42 respectively and we we born at a time when people generally married younger. My DGMs were 40 and 41 when they completed their families. Not sure if it makes any difference if it’s your first or last. If she has never tried before, I would think her chances are good. If she has spent years being careless about contraception, her chances not so good. She can’t know till she tries.

I know at least 5 women who had babies in their 40’s ( without help ) it’s a lot more common than the statistics would have you believe.

I had my first at 41 after about 6 months TTC.

It's just so individual. Some women in their forties seem to get pregnant as easily as a teenager at the school dance, for others it's all over by 39. You don't know until you try.

The other thing to think about (which I never see mentioned on these threads) is that it's not justabout conceiving your first child. It's the second and third that may be tricky. You could have number one with few problems at 40+, but if you want more, then you're going to have to have them very close together, if at all. Secondary infertility is horrendous. I had it and it really really suprised me how upsetting I found it all. And I wasn't particularly hung up on having a particular family set up or amount of children

The four friends I have who started trying in their 40s all also conceived without IVF or similar. It's all still anecdotal but I don't think the picture is quite as bleak for 40+ women as the stats suggest although age probably is still a factor.

Anecdotes aren’t data and no one can say for sure that your cousin will be able to get pregnant over 40. Plenty of women do, but also plenty don’t, you just don’t hear about them so much.

You have a 5% chance over 40, of getting pregnant, without any help.

5% per cycle.

No-one ever seems to understand this.

She has a decent chance, though the further over 40 she gets the more it drops,band also it v much depends on her individual fertility (and that of her partner) .. purely colloquial but I've heard it said that your eggs start to really dwindle ten yrs before menopause, and you can try to predict that by what age your mother went through menopause.

The number of women in the UK having babies in their 40s has overtaken those having babies under 20 recently btw.

She needs to have a fertility check with a reputable clinic. Not perfect but useful.

She also needs to track tracking her cycle, and taking folic acid, selenium, zinc, co enzyme Q10/ubiquinol as well as a multi vitamin with all the usual things (iron, calcium, magnesium, vitamin d etc).

You have a 5% chance over 40, of getting pregnant, without any help.

This is utter rubbish! The correct statistic is a 5% chance of getting pregnant each month. That means something very different!

I conceived straight away age 40 and had a healthy pregnancy. My midwife said older mothers conceived naturally was not unusual and unless there were other health issues we were treated the same as younger mothers.

@zzzzzzzx I knew someone who had an unplanned child at 50, following many earlier miscarriages.

It’s not just age dependent, it’s how “old” you are depending on your ovarian egg reserve. A 20 year old could have the reserves of a 40 year old.

There is a test you can buy online (you need a nurse to send in a blood sample).

I took one in my mid 30s because my mum had menopause in her early 40s and I suspected I was “older” eggwise and might have early menopause too.

My reserve was that of a late 20s woman. So I was one of those stats that appeared to conceive easily in my late 30s but actually, my reserves were more of a early 30 year old.

The bitter truth is women with fertility problems / likely to have miscarriages any way are far less likely to conceive after 40 without help. For Women without fertility problems the age at which they conceive doesn’t particularly matter.

Also, need to point out, that if she has pcos then peri menopause may not start until 45 or later.

*start tracking her cycle.

Some women in their forties seem to get pregnant as easily as a teenager at the school dance

When I was at school both our neighbour and my school mate's mum got lax with their contraception and fell pregnant at 45. Quite a few women in their 40s think their risk is low do they don't use contraception reliably and get pregnant.. if you read the pregnancy choices board there's one nearly every other day pregnant in 40s, shocked and mostly considering termination.
The 35 cliff myth is not doing women any favours.

I'm from the border between NI and the ROI and until recently here religion & culture often meant no contraception "allowed" ... Women commonly had kids into 40s - usually 43, sometimes older. It was not considered unusual in any way. And we never know how many 49s women are like this because most choose not to have kids over 40.

As other pp's have pointed out however, it does depend entirely on the individual.

*40s women

My DD was a 40th birthday present! I was 40 in the August and DD came along the following April 😊😊 (a few weeks early).
Life really did begin at 40 in my case.

I had my first at 42 and conceived the first month of trying. Totally trouble free oh and birth.

No one in our NCT group was under 35.

But what matters is not what happened for other women but what
is happening in your individual body.

Yes, statistically fertility drops. But that doesn’t tell you about the individual woman.

However I thought the ‘fertility drops off a cliff at 35’ theory had been modified as based on outdated flawed studies.

Had my first and only child at 40. DS is now 18 at Uni.

This is utter rubbish! The correct statistic is a 5% chance of getting pregnant each month. That means something very different!

This is so frustrating isn't it.

I've been on threads here where a poster commented that she was "in the 5%" and therefore unusual in falling pregnant; I responded that she's not "in the 5%" of anything and she was not extremely unusual.

In another thread I was told I was embarrassing myself and should leave the thread for stating that the majority of late 30s women get pregnant ok (they do, 90% under 40 within two yes).

That (french 17th and 17th century parish record) 35 "cliff" study has a lot to answer for. Not only do pp now think women's fertility plummets at 35, I've heard men state their belief that the menopause is at 35.

*two years

*17th and 18th century