FERTILITY THE CONFLICTING FACTS AND FIGURES

27

The age at which women should start trying to conceive if they want to have more than one child, according to researchers at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. A University of Sydney study found that having babies less than 18 months apart may slightly increase the risk of pregnancy complications.

29

The age by which women need to start trying if they want to be sure of getting pregnant at all, according to Professor Geeta Nargund, lead consultant for reproductive medicine at St George’s Hospital in London. The average age for a woman in the UK to have a child is now 30, compared with 26 in 1976.

35

The age at which fertility is thought to “drop off a cliff ”; in fact, this claim is based heavily on data from 17th-century France. A more modern study, cited by the NHS, found that 82 per cent of couples aged 35-39 will conceive after one year and 90 per cent of couples after two years.

40

The age by which women have just three per cent of the eggs with which they were born remaining, according to St Andrews and Edinburgh Universities. Still, ONS figures in 2015 showed that pregnancy rates for over-40s have more than doubled over the past 24 years.

59

The age at which a British woman became the world’s oldest natural mother. Dawn Brooke gave birth to a son on Guernsey in 1997, after conceiving without the aid of fertility treatment, breaking the previous world record for a natural pregnancy by two years.