To not know if I can get pregnant at 49?

[Holyguacamollie]

I stopped using contraception a few months ago because quite frankly I'm sick of it and when I googled getting pregnant at 49.6 it said it was 0-1% chance.

It felt like v good odds.

However. I now 'feel' pregnant and I'm a bit panicked. Period due in a few days.

Surely I couldn't be could I?

www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/birthsbyparentscharacteristics/2021/parentscharacteristics2021workbookfinal.xlsx

Not as rare as you’d think

That’s roughly 2000 babies born to woman over 45 every year.

4 women in my family have had babies from aged 40-48. Me included. All planned. All absolutely fine. You could be pregnant at 49.

I had a Mirena coil fitted as part of HRT last summer. I’m 49 and the doctor insisted I stay on the mini pill until I could get a scan to check the coil was in the right place, as I have a tilted uterus. I felt horrendous on the double hormones so ditched the mini pill, but we were pretty careful until the scan just in case.

I had a shock pregnancy at 43. She is almost 4 now. The midwives in the hospital said I was very far from unusual and in all likelihood if I'd wanted another baby I could possibly have gone again but I was taking no risks and had my tubes removed during my section. I realise however that reproductively speaking there is a massive difference between 43 and 49. My grandmother was 46 having her last child. I'm in Ireland so in previous generations when contraception wasn't used due to religious beliefs women had babies until their bodies decided to call it a day so lots of people Ive come across were born as the youngest child of often a large family to much older parents . I know several people with older siblings 20 or even more years apart from them.
Best of luck with it all OP. Hopefully you are worrying for absolutely nothing

Not a midwife and I know 3 off the too of my head.

My school mate's Mum - 45 yr old Mum and older Dad, thought they'd not get caught.

A neighbour, 45 yr old Mum and 50 something Dad, thought they'd not get caught.

My sister's running club acquaintance - 47, not sure what age Dad is.

Where I'm from (on the border between NI and ROI) it was common until recently for couples from both Catholic and occasionally very religious protestants to use no.contraception and babies to women up to 45 and occasionally beyond were quite common. We have a baby boomer mentality about female fertility; before the baby boom generation, sterilisation and the pill, it wasn't uncommon.

@SparkyBlue but they are one of the older children's child. 😫

Estimates of the population for the UK, England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Within this dataset, please navigate to the tab named 'MYE2 – Females'. This provides population estimates for females by single year of age for the United Kingdom (code K02000001) and England (code E92000001) in mid-2019. This is the most up-to-date information we have available. Data for mid-2019 to mid-2020 will be available in June 2021.
Mid-2019 population estimate for women aged 45 to 60 in the UK: 7,244,488
Mid-2019 population estimate for women aged 45 to 60 in England: 6,055,78

I didn't check stats on women older than 60 because it wouldn't have been fair to the evidence ;)

2000 births to 7.24 million women. That is rare!

Yep this; and the parents still having babies when the older kids were having theirs.

Fingers crossed.

It can't be that common, lots are probably miscarried too.

I agree that lots of people knowing off someone who had a baby in late 40s could well be stories off a friend of a friend, or a friend of Grannies from years ago.

I do believe it's does and can happen to have a natural pregnancy and birth at 49 but will be very rare.
Op if you are pregnant lots of people will assume that you've had some sort of help, IVF with donor eggs.

I know of two over 50. One was a woman who had had a long history of miscarriage and another was a woman who had ivf abroad.

@ZenNudist That was so rude and unnecessary. What made you think it was a remotely helpful thing to say?

2000 births to 7.24 million women. That is rare!

It's by design, not by potential/ability though.

That's important to remember.

Take away contraception and see how rare it is. You'll never get those figures. In fact even when you remove hormonal & surgical etc contraception from a populace, they'll still use barrier and withdrawal and abstinence etc etc to acheive it (unless they've been thoroughly brain washed not to by a religion).

My old next door neighbour was 50 when she "went through the menopause" but she felt so ill she went to the doctors , Menopause was actually pregnancy and she gave birth to a healthy baby boy

And it doesn’t say how many are IVF or donor eggs either

It's possible if you're still having regular periods, but unlikely

It also doesn't say how many women have miscarriages or abortions in that age group either.

I'm so sorry to read this. My remark was flippant and it was not intended to be hurtful. I apologise if it was.

My youngest brother was born when my mam was 48 love him to bits. And actually there's quite a bunch of over 40 women had cousins etc in our family. Never quite sure where statistics come from sometimes but I know more older women than younger who all had successful pregnancies no more problems than a younger with some. I'm 38 got 1 year old twins and nearly 2 boy home births no problems with any of them also a 13 yr old home birth...got told couldn't have anymore after I had a horse riding accident a few years ago and hey in a lot during covid and now we have 3 more lol

There is a history of "menopause babies" in my mothers family.

I am 49 now and have decided that rather than leave my Mirena in for 10 years as HRT I will get it replaced next year for contraception,I have learned lessons from history!

I don’t believe all these 50 odd year olds who are having babies. It’s incredibly rare.

I was asking a midwife as they know whether a pregnancy is natural conception or IVF/ egg donor. You can't be sure if the people you know had IVF many people don't share whether they had . Before the pill , grandmother's would frequently pass off their teenage daughters off spring as their own Yes it is uncommon and it's quite alarming to peddle it as theres many older women desperate to TTC on here The science says it's hard to conceive naturally with own eggs at 43 and carry to term, late 40s it's almost impossible.

Myself, I had DC1 aged 44 and DC2 when I was 6 weeks off 48. We didn't use IVF. A neighbour turned out to have had hers at 46 and 48. We both had married fairly late; we were pleasantly surprised that we were able to have children naturally.

Apparently, births to women 40-44 peaked at 19 births per 1000 in 1947, vs 13 in 2010 and , of course, they didn't have IVF then www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/olympic-britain/population/have-kids-settle-down/

Probably in part due to women that age not actively trying to get pregnant (as well as many being menopausal). I’m 48 and had my first child at 40. I had two mcs beforehand but was pregnant again within 3 months each time (unassisted).Still having regular periods every 28 days, so I guess if I were to try then there would be a possibility.