It isn’t uncommon for women to postpone their plans for starting a family until much later in life than they did in the past. Many women reach the age of forty before they ever try to conceive. Although this may give them the opportunity to established a successful career before the have a baby, becoming pregnant may be much more difficult that conceiving at a younger age.
Studies performed in populations where birth control is not practiced have shown that a sharp decline occurs in the pregnancy rate of women who are thirty-five and older. This shows that it is less likely for an older woman to get pregnant naturally, not that there are just fewer women who are trying at this age.
Many celebrities have waited until they were older to become pregnant for the first time. Some of them have worked with fertility specialists and undergone the newest procedures available in order to conceive. Celebrities can usually afford to have any type of treatment or procedure they need in order to get pregnant and they accept the risks associated with postponing pregnancy until they are older.
If you are forty or older, then there are some tips that can help you to conceive without the treatments or procedures provided by a fertility doctor. Using the following information can help increase your chances of getting pregnant:
- Consider your overall health. If the body is healthy, then the hormone levels are more likely to be balanced. Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone are all hormones that are involved in your menstrual cycle and keeping them at the right levels during all phases of your cycle will ensure ovulation.
- Watch your weight. Find out what your ideal body weight should be, or your body mass index (BMI), and what you need to gain or lose in order to reach it. Women who are overweight or underweight may have irregular monthly cycles, or no periods at all. If you are too thin or extremely active, you may have amenorrhea, a condition where you have irregular or absent menstrual periods. This is a sign that you are not ovulating and you can’t conceive unless you are.
- Start taking folic acid supplements three months or more before you start trying to get pregnant and continue through your first trimester of pregnancy. You will need at least 400 mg every day to help reduce the risks for neural tube defects.
- Don’t smoke and avoid second hand smoke. If you smoke while trying to conceive, you will damage your tubes and prevent fertilization. It also damages ovaries and accelerates reserve loss. You don’t need to do any further damage that will increase your difficulty in getting pregnant.
- Eliminate caffeine and alcohol from your diet. While there are varying results from research that determines how much is too much, there is no evidence that you will get any benefits from drinking either. Some studies have shown that one glass of wine per week is enough to drastically affect your fertility. Err on the side of caution and eliminate caffeine and alcohol completely.
- Schedule intercourse. Determining the time of your ovulation isn’t an exact science. To narrow down the time that ovulation occurs, use a combination of monitoring your basal body temperature, checking your cervical mucus, and counting the days based on the length of your menstrual cycle. When your basal body temperature increases, this suggests ovulation as does the presence of clear, sticky mucus that resembles the texture of egg whites. For women who have a normal twenty-eight day cycle, counting fourteen days from the first day of your period should give you an idea of when you will ovulate. While using one of these methods may not accurately help determine the time of your ovulation, combing all three methods should give you an accurate prediction. This will help you to know the right time for intercourse to improve your chances of conceiving.
