Number of follicles

[winterfox78]

Hi I just thought I'd post as it might help someone and someone might be able to help me 😊

When I was 39 I had an ultrasound - pelvic just to check all was ok.

The results at the time read I had 4 follicles on my right ovary and 10 follicles on my left ovaryZ and a dominant follicle within my left ovary...

We later went on to conceive our beautiful DD. She was born the week I turned 40.

I'm now 43 and we have been considering and trying for a second.

My question - did I just get lucky?? And maybe I have even less follicles now?

Have no idea how many follicles is good post 35

@winterfox78 congratulations on your DD. Have you been trying?

For what it's worth my antral follicle count at 43 was 4 and 5 which wasn't too bad. I think it was more like 7 and 8 at 40. My AMH was 4 and it had been 12 when I was 40. In IVF terms, I had reasonably good fertility for my age.

I'm not really sure how relevant your follicle count is for natural conception. It's quite useful for IVF because they are trying to stimulate as many follicles as possible so knowing how many you have can be useful. I say "can be" because it doesn't always translate to your outcomes anyway.

It is true that numbers decline with age but women are so different that there isn't really a comparison. Of course it does give a guide to whether your fertility has declined but at 43 it will have declined to an extent in everyone.

Women do conceive healthy kids at this age and hopefully you will too.

Best of luck xxx

You probably will have less follicles at 43 but in my experience it’s the egg quality that will be the issue. It sounded like you did have a good amount of follicles at 39 however. Statistically speaking only about 10% of your eggs will be chromosomally normal now so you’re at increased rate of miscarriage.

I hope that didn’t sound too clinical, I’m somewhat in the same boat having been extremely lucky to conceive my DD at 42. We won’t be trying for a second.

@Janefx40 thank you. Can I ask if you had children?
We have been trying for a couple of months now...
I'm thinking we are DTD too early in my cycle.
I've had high ovulation readings on testers at day 10 and for next few days...
Could I ovulate later than 12 days on a 24 average cycle??

@winterfox78 I had a DD born just before my 42nd birthday.

We started trying for a second when I was 43 (...it's a long and complicated story!).

We have to do IVF anyway so it's not really comparable but I was able to create 2 euploid (chromosomally normal) embryos at 44. That is unusual because the struggle with older women is creating healthy embryos due to egg quality. In theory if you have a healthy embryo you should be able to carry an embryo into late 40s and beyond. However it is also proving harder for me to get pregnant so I'm not sure how true that is.

Basically what I am trying to say is that yes it is more than possible for you to conceive a healthy child at 43. People definitely do it! It may be harder though and it does carry a much higher risk of losses.

Really hope it works out for you!

@winterfox78 you also asked about ovulation times. Most peoples' luteal phase is 12-14 days as you say but there are always people who have shorter luteal phases. Plus cycles may vary although it would usually be the follicular phase that varies rather than the luteal.

I would trust the OPKs for now in the absence of any better info. For me the CB dual hormone ones are accurate (backed up by lots of IVF scans and bloods).

Do you temp? I never have as it seems stressful but it will be a more accurate way of working out when you ovulate!

Personally if it were me I’d be going straight to TSI to take all the guess work out of it, you really don’t have that much time to spare.