Eggs And Pregnancy Research

In today’s society, more and more women are waiting to start a family often due to career choices, financial stability, and not finding Mr. Right. According to Reisner (2016), “first births to women 35 and older have increased nearly 9 fold in the past 4 decades” (p. 239). From an obstetrical point of view, pregnancy at an advanced maternal age, or anyone who is 35 or older at the time of delivery, is considered a high-risk pregnancy. As woman age, the quality of eggs that are left in the ovaries declines. As a result, the chance of becoming pregnant goes down, the risk of miscarriages goes up, and the risk of chromosomal abnormalities like Down syndrome continues to rise. Most women do very well over the age of 35 with their pregnancies, however, there are just a few more challenges and hurdles that they have to go through as one faces pregnancy later in life. The first hurdle is getting pregnant to begin with. The simple concept of this is that a woman is born with a basket of eggs, all of the eggs she is ever going to have. Over the course of her lifetime, the woman uses up those eggs from her basket. In her teenage years and early twenties, …show more content…
It is important for a woman trying to conceive later in life to go to a specialized obstetrician for a variety of tests that can check for chromosomal abnormalities. In the first trimester, a screening test can be done at 12 weeks. This will include a blood test, as well as an ultrasound where doctors look for something called a nuchal translucency. If the stripe is thin and the blood test is normal, there’s a very good chance that the baby is fine without doing any invasive testing. If invasive testing is needed, chorionic villus sampling and amniocentesis is performed, but both come with a risk of