Delaying Pregnancy Can Cause Infertility and Miscarriages, Obstetricians Say

The number of mid-life pregnancies in England and Wales has increased in recent times!

Pregnancies in women of age 40 and above have quadrupled in the last three decades, while those aged 35 and above have also risen significantly.

According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS) data, in 1982, 6,519 live births were reported in England and Wales to women aged above 40, which means that one in 18 or 5.5 percent of all babies delivered that year were born to middle-aged mothers. The same figure has climbed to 29,994, or 19.8 percent in 2012.

The data also found that the average age of mothers is moving away. It was 26.4 years in 1973, which changed to 29.8 last year. Plus, the average age of delivering the first baby has grown from 26.8 in 2002 to 28.1 last year.

The shift in motherhood period can be attributed to the current generation of women who are more career and education oriented. Most of them prefer to settle down with a family once they have secure job and financial stability.

The ONS said that apart from these reasons, society is also encountering a lot of 'instability in partnerships' which might be acting as a catalyst in the delay, Guardian reports.

According to the Mirror, the birth rate of women aged 30 and above decreased somewhat in 2012 when compared to 2011. In 2012, women above age 30 accounted for 49 percent of the 729,674 live births, a minor drop from the 51 percent recorded last year.

Dr Michael Heard, a spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a consultant obstetrician in Hampshire, said that this finding is not shocking.

"All obstetricians are seeing a much greater trend towards older mums as women delay childbearing for various reasons, including the fact that effective contraception allows people to plan when they have their family and also because assisted fertilisation techniques can allow older women a better chance of conceiving," Heard told the Guardian.

However, Heard warned about dire consequences to mothers who delay their childbirth to 40s. They have higher possibility of not conceiving at all or experiencing a miscarriage. The ONS data, further revealed that around 10 percent of mothers aged over 40 delivered a premature baby, 37 weeks ahead of the due date in comparison with 6.7 percent mothers aged between 25 and 29.

"My personal view, as someone who's been a consultant obstetrician for 20 years, is that people should try to start having their family by 37 because after that things become more complex and it's harder to get pregnant," Heard said.