Women who take years to get pregnant are more likely to give birth to unhealthy babies.
Women who take years to get pregnant are more likely to give birth to unhealthy babies.
Women take longer to get pregnant as they age. For example, up to 85 percent of fertile women younger than 35 years old will get pregnant within one year of trying, while just half of women older than 35 will. To investigate associations between time taken to conceive and pregnancy outcomes, researchers studied 17,114 pregnancies delivered between 1989 and 2007 at Kuopio University Hospital in Finland. None of the women had used ART. Nearly three-quarters got pregnant within six months, while 12 percent took six months to a year to conceive, 6 percent took between 13 months and two years, and about 4 percent took longer than two years to become pregnant.
It was observed that the longer it took a woman to get pregnant, the more likely she was to have had at least one miscarriage beforehand. Once the researchers adjusted for factors like a woman's age, whether or not she was married, and whether or not she had previous miscarriages, it was found that women who took more than two years to get pregnant were 51 percent to 64 percent more likely to have adverse pregnancy outcomes such as premature delivery and giving birth to an unhealthy baby. It was also found that these women were at greater risk of having problems during pregnancy and labor, such as developing pregnancy-related diabetes and infections of the membranes surrounding the fetus.
The findings suggest that the relationship some studies have found between ART and poor pregnancy outcomes could have something to do with the mother having taken a longer time to conceive.
Women take longer to get pregnant as they age. For example, up to 85 percent of fertile women younger than 35 years old will get pregnant within one year of trying, while just half of women older than 35 will. To investigate associations between time taken to conceive and pregnancy outcomes, researchers studied 17,114 pregnancies delivered between 1989 and 2007 at Kuopio University Hospital in Finland. None of the women had used ART. Nearly three-quarters got pregnant within six months, while 12 percent took six months to a year to conceive, 6 percent took between 13 months and two years, and about 4 percent took longer than two years to become pregnant.
It was observed that the longer it took a woman to get pregnant, the more likely she was to have had at least one miscarriage beforehand. Once the researchers adjusted for factors like a woman's age, whether or not she was married, and whether or not she had previous miscarriages, it was found that women who took more than two years to get pregnant were 51 percent to 64 percent more likely to have adverse pregnancy outcomes such as premature delivery and giving birth to an unhealthy baby. It was also found that these women were at greater risk of having problems during pregnancy and labor, such as developing pregnancy-related diabetes and infections of the membranes surrounding the fetus.
The findings suggest that the relationship some studies have found between ART and poor pregnancy outcomes could have something to do with the mother having taken a longer time to conceive.
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