Planning a baby in your late 30’s? A few facts that you may want to know

Dramatically changing lifestyle’s today is marked with more and more women being independent and career oriented. Climbing up that corporate ladder does need a lot of hard work and priorities have changed from marriage and family to work. This major shift in mindset comes with delayed marriages and pregnancies. More and more women are getting married after 25 years and clearly a baby is not on their minds first thing after marriage.

This pace of modern life has resulted in increasing numbers of women who choose to become a mother much later in their lives. This social change is reflected in an increase of 33% of births to mothers over the age of 40 in the last 5 years. The first problem that the couples face while planning a baby late in life is the conception, which is caused due to low egg production as the age of woman increases which may lead to infertility. The decline in fertility is gradual, but many medical providers consider the risks of chromosome abnormalities to be significant in pregnancies after age of 35. Therefore pre natal screening in the first trimester of pregnancy is incomplete without a chromosomal examination. NACE® by IGENOMIX is a non-invasive prenatal screening test (NIPT Test) that screens the embryo for trisomy 21, 18, and 13 (Down’s, Edward’s and Patau’s syndromes) and potential problems in sexual chromosomes 45,X; 47,XXY; 47,XYY and 47,XXX. This test can be performed from the 10th gestational week onwards.

In women over 38 years old, 79% of embryos have chromosomal abnormalities, a major reason for recurrent miscarriages or IVF failures. The risk of abnormalities grows as the age of the mother increases. Most embryos with an incorrect number of chromosomes fail to implant or miscarry during the first trimester of pregnancy. In the late pregnancy, the baby is also prone to develop chromosomal abnormalities such as Down syndrome, Edwards syndrome, and Patau syndrome. Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS) from IGENOMIX can be performed. PGS is an early genetic diagnosis of the embryo prior to its transfer to the uterus, and therefore before the establishment of pregnancy. PGS allows only healthy embryos to be transferred. IGENOMIX recommends that women of advanced maternal age should undergo the PGS test for aneuploidy screening, while it avoids chromosomal abnormalities; in IVF procedures it significantly increases the chances of successful pregnancy by 60%.

Besides above, the risk of high blood pressure doubles for women aged over 35 also there is 10 to 20% chances of hypertension in the pregnant woman of the same age. The chances of having a caesarean section are also about twice as high for women ages 35 to 39 as for those in their 20s, possibly because labour tends to take longer in older women. Most of these concerns can be addressed with proper medical intervention screenings and tests.

Know more about PGS.