Women are generally fertile from the ages of twelve through the age of about 51.  The actual time in which we can get pregnant, however, is much less than that.  A woman’s fertility starts to spiral down after the age of 35 and becomes precipitously less at the age of 40.

It’s not impossible to become pregnant after forty but one may need more focus in order to conceive a child.  For example, a couple may need to use a fertility kit that determines the exact dates of conception in the cycle.  There are other things a couple might do that will be discussed later.

Trying to get pregnant after age forty isn’t a time for waiting expectantly for that pregnancy to occur.  It’s time to see a fertility specialist to determine the cause of why you’re not getting pregnant. Remember that thirty percent of infertility cases are attributed to the man, thirty percent are attributed to the woman and thirty percent are attributed to both the man and the woman.  The rest are of unknown origin.  It pays to know the cause of the fertility issues and correct what one can correct.

Sometimes it’s a matter of the woman not ovulating.  Medications like Clomid® (clomiphine citrate) are easily taken and can stimulate a woman to ovulate.  It’s taken on days five through nine of the cycle and increases the chance of fertility in a woman.  If the man has a low sperm count, an andrology clinic can take several sperm donations and concentrate them, injecting the sperm into the uterus on the day of ovulation.  These are simple ways to improve fertility in women and men of all ages.

In some cases, more is necessary to ensure a pregnancy.  These include in vitro fertilization in which a sperm and egg are united in a Petri dish and incubated until an egg becomes fertilized.  The egg is then transferred through the cervix in order to be implanted and create a pregnancy.

Other choices include zygote intrafallopian transfer, in which the fertilized egg is transferred into the fallopian tube and is allowed to travel down into the uterus for better chances of implantation. In gamete intrafallopian tube transfer, the sperm and the egg are transferred into the fallopian tube for fertilization.

Finally, in subzonal sperm injection or intracytoplasmic sperm injection, the sperm is injected into the egg or the outer layers of the egg to ensure fertilization and to then transfer the fertilized egg into the uterus.  Over the age of forty, there is a higher risk that she’s had an STD sometime in her lifetime in which the infection has caused a Fallopian tube blockage.

Chlamydia is well known to cause this. Endometriosis can also block the fallopian tubes.  This means that even if a woman over forty is ovulating nicely, the egg cannot get into the Fallopian tube to become fertilized.  Some form of in vitro fertilization is required in such cases in order to achieve a pregnancy.  This is the cause of infertility in some fifty percent of infertile women.

It is possible for many women over the age of forty to become pregnant.  It just takes a bit of sleuthing to determine if there are any issues affecting fertility and correcting those issues to create a pregnancy.

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