The fertility window: are we lying to women about their biological clocks?
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Does the likelihood of women conceiving really drop off a cliff after 30? Are those aged 35+ actually ‘geriatric’ mothers? As the average age of starting IVF passes 35, Helen Coffey talks to the experts about the realities of getting pregnant later in life.
Laura Linney was 49 when she had her first. Hilary Swank was 48. Chloë Sevigny was 45. If you went off celebrity headlines alone, you’d be forgiven for thinking that most women entered the motherhood game past the age of 40 these days.
And yet, the judgement cast upon women who put off having children – and the constant references to our biological clocks as ticking timebombs – remains as prevalent as it ever was. In an article in The Guardian earlier this year, Laura Barton wrote poignantly about the experience of falling pregnant unexpectedly at the age of 45 after years of trying unsuccessfully, including via IVF. ‘All through the long months of pregnancy and the early weeks of my son’s life, I felt I stood under a cloud of su...
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