Northwell Health - Plainview & Syosset Hospitals

Spring 2016

Look North is a magazine published by the Northwell Health System. This publication features health and wellness information geared toward healthcare consumers in the Long Island and New York City region.

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While more women continue to have children in their 30s and 40s, it becomes more diffi cult to become pregnant with age. Baby girls are born with one million to two million eggs in their ovaries, and that supply of eggs declines through adulthood. By menopause, women have only a few hundred eggs left. Eggs become less responsive to follicle-stimulating hormone as time passes, making them less likely to develop into embryos after fertilization. As a result, it becomes more challenging to become pregnant as women enter their 30s. Yet hitting the big 3-0 does not mean that bearing a child is out of the question. Studies show fertility changes gradually for women during their 20s and 30s. Approximately 98 percent of women ages 19 to 26 trying to get pregnant do so within two years. Women between ages 35 and 39 are successful within two years 90 percent of the time. CONSIDERATIONS The rise in births during the 30s and beyond is due, at least in part, to improved fertility treatment options. Doctors offer a variety of medications, procedures and assisted-reproductive technology techniques to help improve a woman's chances of becoming pregnant. While waiting to have children may be the right choice for some families, becoming pregnant later in life does carry a higher risk of certain complications. Health concerns related to high blood pressure are more common in women over age 40, and the likelihood of conceiving a child with Down syndrome increases as women age. On the other hand, giving birth later in life is also linked to living longer. A 2014 Boston University School of Medicine study found that women who have children after age 33 are twice as likely to live to age 95 as women who have their last child by age 29. Fertility Curve Fertility Curve Put parenthood within your reach at the Center for Human Reproduction in Manhasset, Flushing and Rego Park (516-562-BABY), Mineola (516-470-BABY) and Suffolk (631-650-BABY); Lenox Hill Human Reproduction in Manhattan (212-324-BABY); or Island Reproductive Services on Staten Island (718-948-6100). FOR HER Northwell.edu 14 TO FIND A PHYSICIAN NEAR YOU, CALL 1-888-321-DOCS. More women are waiting until later in life to have children. What does this mean for their odds of conceiving? The number of women who become fi rst-time mothers later in life rose signifi cantly between 2000 and 2012 — increasing by 25 percent for those ages 35 to 39, and by 35 percent among those 40 to 44, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. THE

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