NHS chief warns women not to wait until 30 to have baby as country faces a fertility timebomb

[Childrenofthestones]

NHS chief warns women not to wait until 30 to have baby as country faces a fertility timebomb

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3104023/NHS-chief-warns-women-not-wait-30-baby-country-faces-fertility-timebomb.html

^One of Britain’s top NHS fertility specialists last night issued a stark warning to women: Start trying for a baby before you’re 30 – or risk never having children.

In a strongly worded letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, consultant gynaecologist Professor Geeta Nargund has also demanded that teenagers are taught about the dangers of delaying parenthood, because of the spiralling cost to the taxpayer of IVF for women in their late 30s and 40s.^

Professor Nargund cites the agony of a growing number of women left childless as a key reason why fertility lessons must be included in the national curriculum.

Good advice or not?
I remember reading how chances of conceiving can drop off a cliff for some as 40 approaches but then a lot of people aren't in a position to have children in their mid to late 20s.

I do think that for some women they are starting to think that it is "normal" to wait until 30+ to start a family. Agree with the poster who said that people are naive about success rates for IVF which I think adds to the feeling that it's OK to wait.

My dd is 28 and has lots of friends a similar age who have been with their partners for 3-5 years and are only now getting married and are thinking of starting a family in a couple of years time (including my dd). So this isn't women who haven't met the right one yet, rather they are choosing not to start a family until they are over 30. As someone who got married at 29 and then had 12 years of IVF treatment to have 2 children with my dh I do worry about them. If they start trying at 32 then find nothing happens after a year or so, then they have some tests and try various things they can easily be in their mid to late 30s before they are at the point of trying IVF and by then chances are significantly reduced (this is more or less what happened to us).

I agree with the poster above though who said that this is an issue for men too. I would be in favour or telling young people more about infertility when they are at school.

I think it is good trying to redress balance.

All these stories of celebs having babies late in life when they've most likely had ivf/donor eggs.

I wasn't young 30 when I had DD. But I was very aware of fertility declining. DH took little longer than me to be ready but if I had been older I wouldn't have wanted to wait.

Having had one disabled child I am also hyper aware of things that can go wrong and risks that increase with age.

It is also the knock on effect if you want more than one which doesn't seem to dawn on people. So 35 for number one isn't bad but 38 or 39 for number 2 so you don't get saddled with 2 lots of nursery fees is riskier and less chance of success.

Well then make housing cheaper. My nephew and girlfriend want kids but want to have them when they can afford them, housing costs is making it longer to save for a deposit.

Also people should not be fearmongered into having kids before 30.

stoned - I certainly don't say lightly that is rather not have my ds than have him as a lone parent!

Surely it should be obvious that to say that is tough. BUT I am realistic enough to know that to have a son alone in my 20s living hundreds and hundreds of miles from family and "home" but unable to move without custody/access issues would have been really really tough!

On the other hand my GP told me that the majority of unplanned pregnancies/terminations she deals with are to married women in their 40s who have completed their families but get complacent about contraception as they believe they have virtually no chance of falling pregnant at their great age.

The 'knowledge' of this doesn't make it any more possible to have a baby earlier if you don't have a willing partner. By scaring women into having children earlier, you risk a lot more women 'tricking' partners or random men into getting them pregnant.

I'll be 31 this year and haven't started trying for children because I only met my partner recently. I'd have loved to have children when I was 20 but I didn't have the money or partner to do so- I didn't have my first boyfriend until I was 28, not through lack of wanting one but because I am not conventionally pretty most men wouldn't give me a second glance. I'd rather wait and make sure my children have two parents around with secure finances, rather than having to stall my career when I was 20 and possibly being a single parent with no source of income other than benefits. If this happens, you deal with it and there are a lot of great mothers who have been in that situation. But would any of them have chosen that for them or their child?

This article scares me. I desperately want children but have had no choice but to wait. That isn't my fault.

One thing that I think is rarely talked about is the fact that miscarriage rates increase with age too. Many women (and their partners) find this incredibly distressing. Fertility issues aren't just not managing to conceive.

A big problem is people not understanding that what is discussed are averages. However averages are made of extremes with a spread in the middle. While the average may be X the individual can easily be Y.

An awful lot about normal fertility and contraception is neither well explained or well understood.

At school I think that the effectiveness of different contraception methods should be better explained as I am fairly sure that a lot of young people dont really understand this. They can trot out the effectiveness rates but dont really understand that a 5% failure rate means that 5 women in 100 will get 100% pregnant..

For adults I would like to see doctors surgeries offering 'getting ready to conceive' clinics for women and men. Some basic advice about general health, stopping contraception, stopping smoking, drinking and recreational drug use.

I just want to echo MileyVirus. Most people try to have kids when they are ready for them and not before. For most that will include having some kind of financial stability, and that is becoming rarer and rarer for anyone under the age of 45 now. In fact if we want kids before we're financially stable we get pilloried in the press for that too - the common complaint about women having kids and then expecting the taxpayer to cough up.

As usual women are damned any way they turn.

I can't say I'm all that happy about ivf on the NHS though I admit.

There is of course a lot of pressure on women already, and if and when to have children should be a personal decision. However, at nearly 30 I have a number of friends my age who are married or in long term relationships that they see lasting forever and most of them have recently told me they don't think it's time to think about children yet - they plan to start talking about it around 35-40. If they are all fully aware of the implications of that then of course it's their choice - but people ought to be making informed choices and a lot of people don't think fertility will be an issue. There is also recent research on male fertility that shows more mutations in older males, meaning that the embryo stops developing in early pregnancy. I don't know many men who are aware of this.

I think the main factor is economic. The cost of housing is huge and the government should do something about it.

And then obviously if lots of men don't want kids until their forties, women have a choice of have a baby, have a young man, or have an old man and a baby.

I'd always go for the baby, but it seems some women would rather go for the young man.

Either way, women know fertility declines with age. We're not stupid.

I agree - every time a celeb in their forties has a baby without also talking about what was needed to do so, it suggests that anyone can have a baby or three well after the point when fertility declines

Does anyone know what the current research is on Fertility rates and how they decline?

Am on phone, but there are lots of sites that tell you the chance of conceiving at each age, and the chance of health issues.

Sorry for the anecdote but it took 2-3 years for me to get pregnant having started trying aged 29. Took just one month aged 34. I don't think I would have been able to cope with the emotional difficulties of infertility if I'd started sooner.
I wish there was a fertility mot you could have earlier in life so you'd know whether you had time on your side. GPs always seemed pretty chipper about it, that it would happen eventually (they probably tend to have children later in life themselves) so although many women are aware of a possible decline later in life, that's not the message we are getting consistently.

Wikipedia has this page if it's helpful.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility

Thanks!

Longtalljosie - yes!

MY DH is 9y younger than me, but I didn't meet him until I was 36. Didn't jump straight into having children, obviously, because we needed to get to know each other! But when I was 38, I had the conversation with him about having children - his game plan was to wait until he was 35, because he didn't feel ready yet. I told him that wouldn't work for me, as I would then be 44 and too old - he said that his cousin was born when his aunt was in her 40s, so assumed it would be ok. I put him straight and said that if he really wanted to wait that long then perhaps we should call it a day and he could find someone younger.

Well, he changed his mind and we were incredibly lucky to have had Ds1 when I was 40, and Ds2 when I was 45, without fertility treatment - I fully appreciate how lucky we were - but if I'd waited until he was ready, I doubt we'd have either of them.

There's actually a lot of disagreement in current research about the alleged fertility cliff at 35. The original idea came from VERY old data (seriously - it's from [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24128176 18th century France) and it's not really been borne out in more recent studies with better methodology. The idea is still very prevalent in the media and amongst many medical professionals, though.

Female fertility begins declining in mid-20s but it seems to be a fairly linear decline until menopause. Male fertility begins to decline in mid-30s, in a fairly linear way until death. Basically, as a woman ages her egg reserve shrinks and the eggs degrade in quality, so the chance of getting a viable egg on any given cycle goes down. But men experience only degrading quality as they age, not a shrinking reserve, so the male fertility decline is less dramatic.

For example, this huge review study shows that the odds of a couple (with no known fertility problems) conceiving naturally within 2 years of ttc are about:
63% for women aged 19-26
55% for women ages 27-34
51% for women aged 35-40
... so long as the man is aged under 35 as well. If both partners are 35-40, the odds drop to 43%.

Not much of a cliff there. And data like that - other reviews have shown similar - is not at all consistent with the opinions of the consultant in the OP's article, which was very scaremongering in tone.

According to the data, having an older partner can be just as much of an impediment to conception as waiting 5 years to ttc. But no one is telling women to go out and find a younger partner! No, better to beat up women for not ttc earlier

Aargh - sorry about link fail. On phone app.

There's actually a lot of disagreement in current research about the alleged fertility cliff at 35. The original idea came from VERY old data (seriously - it's from 18th century France) and it's not really been borne out in more recent studies with better methodology. The idea is still very prevalent in the media and amongst many medical professionals, though.

Female fertility begins declining in mid-20s but it seems to be a fairly linear decline until menopause. Male fertility begins to decline in mid-30s, in a fairly linear way until death. Basically, as a woman ages her egg reserve shrinks and the eggs degrade in quality, so the chance of getting a viable egg on any given cycle goes down. But men experience only degrading quality as they age, not a shrinking reserve, so the male fertility decline is less dramatic.

For example, this huge review study shows that the odds of a couple (with no known fertility problems) conceiving naturally within 2 years of ttc are about:
63% for women aged 19-26
55% for women ages 27-34
51% for women aged 35-40
... so long as the man is aged under 35 as well. If both partners are 35-40, the odds drop to 43%.

Not much of a cliff there. And data like that - other reviews have shown similar - is not at all consistent with the opinions of the consultant in the OP's article, which was very scaremongering in tone.

According to the data, having an older partner can be just as much of an impediment to conception as waiting 5 years to ttc. But no one is telling women to go out and find a younger partner! No, better to beat up women for not ttc earlier

unless there is advice aimed at men as well, then it's all a bit pointless - or we'll end up in some kind of Jane Austen-esque situation where 25 yo women routinely get married and have children with 45 yo men. MIL asked me (1st and only child at 38) why so many women 'left' having children so late, and I made this exact point to her, and she seemed astonished by the concept, even though 2 of her own DSs didn't have DC until well into their 30s! DH would have run for the hills if anyone suggested he start a family in his 20s.

I also love the fact that this article appeared next to a photo of SamCam in a bikini. That would be the SamCam who had her DC at 31, 33, 35 and 37, would it?

Thanks geeka I thought I had read something like that too.

Yy River. DH too was completely unaware that fertility declined before it stopped, IYSWIM. He was ready for kids before I was so it was no problem but it surprised me someone could be unaware.

YY to Slug's post "NHS Chief warns businesses not to discriminate against women as country faces a fertility time bomb."