Women spend years using birth control to prevent pregnancy and plan their families. Few worry about getting pregnant. Yet, one in ten women will face infertility.
How long should you try to get pregnant before seeking help? The answer depends on your age and overall health.
Chetanna Okasi, MD, at Women’s Wellness MD, specializes in infertility and has helped many women have healthy babies. But the first step is determining when it’s time to seek an infertility evaluation.
After reading this blog, you can better understand when to worry about infertility. However, schedule an appointment anytime you need help with or have questions about getting pregnant.
Healthy men continuously produce new sperm throughout their lifetime. By comparison, women are born with all the eggs they’ll ever have.
Because you don’t produce new eggs, the number remaining in your ovaries declines monthly. Aging also affects the quality of the remaining eggs, with fewer likely to support a pregnancy. These changes are why a woman’s age defines infertility.
The following are the overall chances of getting pregnant after trying for one year:
After 40, your ability to get pregnant declines every month.
Here’s how we define infertility:
In this age group, infertility is when you don't get pregnant after having regular intercourse (without birth control) for one year.
One year may seem like a long time, but it often takes that long. For healthy women trying to get pregnant, 85% conceive within one year.
Between the ages of 35 and 39, you’re diagnosed with infertility if you’re not pregnant after having regular intercourse (without birth control) for six months.
If you decide to have a baby after 40, you shouldn’t wait six months. Instead, schedule an infertility evaluation as soon as you want to conceive.
We can determine if you have any gynecological issues that may affect conception and pregnancy, evaluate your overall fertility, and create a plan to improve your chances of getting pregnant.
You may be frustrated and worried about infertility after trying to conceive for six months or longer. However, trying to get pregnant means something different to each person. We need to explore what it means to you before determining if you’re infertile.
Why does it matter? Because there are only a few days every month when it’s possible to conceive.
You may think you’re having sex frequently enough to get pregnant. However, you won’t get pregnant if the timing of intercourse misses your monthly fertility window.
Each month, your ovary releases an egg into the fallopian tube (ovulation). Then, the egg travels through the tube to your uterus. The egg can only get fertilized by sperm for about 12-24 hours while still in the fallopian tube.
Sperm must travel through the cervix and uterus and then into the fallopian tube. Healthy sperm can survive in your uterus and fallopian tubes for up to five days.
To conceive, the sperm’s five days must overlap with the egg’s 12-24-hour fertility window. Without planning, it’s easy to miss the window. That’s why it takes most women a year of trying before they’re successful.
While most women can wait six months or a year before scheduling an infertility evaluation, not everyone should wait that long. Schedule an appointment if you:
Identifying your fertility window increases your chances of conceiving. Women ovulate 12-14 days before their period begins. You can estimate your fertility window by counting the days if you have regular periods.
However, if your periods are irregular, the timing varies. Or, you may want to be more precise about the optimal time to have sex. We can recommend methods for identifying ovulation and how often to have sex during your fertile time.
Don’t wait 6-12 months to schedule an infertility evaluation if you have a gynecological condition known to affect your fertility. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, and uterine fibroids are some of the top causes of female infertility.
Contact us whenever you have worries or questions about getting pregnant and infertility. Call the Women’s Wellness MD office in Greenbelt or Columbia or request an appointment online.
