- Dr Gillian Lockwood says that the trend of later pregnancies is worrying
- Women should fall pregnant age 25 to avoid potential problems
- IVF is not a solution for women as it becomes less effective after age 40
Colin Fernandez Science Correspondent For The Daily Mail
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Dr Gillian Lockwood said many now able to look ‘shiny and young’ on the outside may struggle to understand that they might have left it too late to have a baby
Women who look youthful into their 40s are often shocked to learn they have lower chances of giving birth and need to be warned they cannot ‘Botox their ovaries’, according to a fertility expert.
Dr Gillian Lockwood said many now able to look ‘shiny and young’ on the outside may struggle to understand that they might have left it too late to have a baby because their biological clock has aged as normal inside.
She added the best time for a woman to become a mother is around the age of 25, when fertility is at its peak and the risk of miscarriage and genetic conditions such as Down’s syndrome are at their lowest.
However, many at this age have just graduated and are facing pressures such as paying back student loans and establishing a career.
Dr Lockwood, a gynaecologist, said this meant some who might have wanted a large family end up with just one baby, leading to a generation of ‘lonely only’ children without brothers or sisters.
Speaking at a talk at the Cheltenham Science Festival entitled the Fertility Time Bomb, she said the pressures of modern life meant many delayed childbirth.
‘A lot of women in their early 40s, because they look so young and feel so young, they feel will be able to have a baby without too much difficulty and delay,’ she added.
‘They find their chance of getting pregnant naturally drops down to 5 per cent and their miscarriage rate is 40 per cent. So what we’ve got here is a problem that women on the outside are shiny and young and youthful and on the inside their ovaries know exactly what it says on their birth certificate. You cannot Botox your ovaries.’
CHILDREN OF OLDER MUMS ‘CAN’T BOND WITH GRANNY’
Parents who wait to start a family are preventing their children bonding with grandparents, a fertility expert warned yesterday.
Dr Gillian Lockwood said women’s later births meant grandparents were too old to take an active part in their grandchildren’s upbringing.
It also led to a ‘sandwich generation’ of mothers and fathers who, instead of getting help from their parents, were forced to look after them as they became more frail at the same time as working and raising their children.
Dr Lockwood said: ‘One of the most poignant aspects of the spreading generations is we might lose this wonderful relationship between grandparents and grandchildren.
‘We could end up with this zimmer frame-cum-pram-cum-shopping trolley for the woman who decided 55 was a really good time to have that baby she always wanted.’
Dr Lockwood said many women turn to IVF to have a child in later life, but the process has a rapidly decreasing success rate once a woman hits 40. She added research shows that by the age of 40 there is a 12 per cent chance of IVF with a woman’s own egg working, falling to 1.6 per cent by the age of 45.
‘The bleak reality is that the chance of IVF working with your own eggs once you are 40 is absolutely abysmal,’ Dr Lockwood said.
‘In what other branch of medicine would we let – let alone encourage – patients pay for an elective operation with a less than 5 per cent chance of working?’ She argued that in any other branch of medicine, suggesting an operation with such a low chance of success would lead to a doctor being ‘struck off’.
Dr Lockwood, fertility director of Midland Fertility Services, said: ‘What I see in my clinic which is even more distressing than primary infertility – not being able to have a child – is so-called secondary subfertility.
‘These are people who have got one child and they really want to have another one and it just won’t happen. So they go along, aged 39 or 40, to their local NHS clinic, quite reasonably, and they say, “You’re not childless, we can’t help you, you better go and have private IVF.”’
She said several Hollywood stars had apparently given birth to babies in their 40s, claiming they had conceived naturally but had in fact used donor eggs, creating a false impression to other women.
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FERTILITY EXPERTS: ‘DITCH TIGHT UNDERWEAR AND GO FOR A TOY BOY’
Men who wear tight underwear are more likely to have poor sperm than men who wear boxer shorts
If men want to improve their chances of fathering a child they should not wear tight underwear, according to a fertility expert.
And if women want to improve their chances they should have a child with a young toy boy, rather than an older man in his 40s.
Fertility expert Professor Allan Pacey, from the University of Sheffield, said there was also mounting evidence that children born to men over the age of 40 were more likely to suffer from conditions like schizophrenia, autism, Down’s syndrome and dwarfism.
‘You should be going for the hot, virile toy boys, popstars and boybands – that is where you should be heading,’ Prof Pacey told the Cheltenham Science Festival.
‘We did a study of 2,500 young men and we thought we needed to be worried about smoking and alcohol consumption. The single biggest risk factor we found was wearing tight underwear.
‘Men who wear tight underwear are two-and-a-half more times likely to have poor sperm than men who wear boxer shorts.’
Prof Pacey said men produced sperm throughout their life, but as they got older the quality declined.
‘Men above the age of 40 are much less fertile than men under the age of 24, and arguably less successful than their partners at this age,’ he said.
‘That isn’t because there has been a dramatic change in the number of sperm produced, it is just by the time you are aged 40 or 45 the quality has declined.
‘Charlie Chaplin was 72 when he had his 11th child with his fourth wife. He was quite an exception and when we pat older guys on the back for having done the deed, I think we are probably sending out the wrong message.
‘There is lots of evidence that children born to men over the age of 40 or 45 are more likely to have things like schizophrenia, autism, Down’s syndrome, dwarfism and lots of other things.
‘The health of children with older fathers is much poorer than the health of children with younger fathers.
‘A man’s contribution to the risk of miscarriage kicks in once he gets to 40. It is a little known fact that problems with sperm can independently contribute to his partner’s risk of miscarriage.’
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