What’s the RIGHT age to get PREGNANT? – Fertility expert explains
Transcription :
For years, you’ve been taught how not to get pregnant, but what happens when you’re ready to start having a family? Is there a perfect time to get pregnant? I often get asked, what’s the right time to start planning for a pregnancy? If you’re thinking about having a baby or you’ve already been trying, and you want to know if it’s too late or too soon, or what’s the right time to get pregnant, I want you to keep watching this video because I’m going to talk about it.
My name is Dr. Marc Sklar, also known as the fertility expert, and welcome to Fertility TV, your YouTube channel dedicated to helping you get pregnant. I’ve been working with couples for over 18 years through my online coaching programs and right here in San Diego at both of my clinics. And if you need help on your fertility journey, if you need a personalized plan to help you get pregnant, or, in this case, know when the right time to get pregnant is, then I want to invite you to join me in my Hope Fertility Coaching Program. It’s open for enrollment now, and you can apply by using the link in the description below.
I want to take a quick pause to say thank you to FairHaven Health for sponsoring this video. I love their supplements, especially FH Pro for Men and FH Pro for Women. If you want more information on that, use the link in the description.
When’s the right time to get pregnant? What’s the right age to get pregnant? Unfortunately, there is no right answer. There’s no straight answer to this because there’s lots of variables that we need to account for when we’re trying to answer this question. Much of this decision really is based on personal preference for you and your partner. What do the both of you want? When is the right time for both of you? Both physically, what’s the right time, family planning wise, in terms of your future goals, your age, your financial stability. These are all variables that we need to account for when we are looking at determining when’s the right time to try to get pregnant.
But I want to help you make that decision. I want to help you have the knowledge and understanding so that you can make the right decision for yourselves, how to move forward and when’s the right time to try? So let’s talk about the science for a little bit. In your late teens and early twenties is by far your best chance to get pregnant. You have somewhere around a 25 to 30% chance to get pregnant between the ages of 18 and 23. Now, I know many of you are saying, “But 18 and 23, I don’t want to get pregnant in my early twenties,” and I’m not suggesting that you do. Again, I’m just trying to educate you. I’m just trying to inform you as to the numbers, the science, and the statistics so that you can make the most informed decision for yourself. And the reality is you are more fertile in your late teens and early twenties than you will be in your forties. It’s just the nature of science and evolution. But you still have to determine what’s the right time for you.
So you might not be ready to get pregnant at 22 or 23, but what impact do these decisions have? Well, the reality is as you age, your ovarian reserve, how many eggs you have left to be used declines. That’s what we’ve all been taught. But what if that’s not really true? What if that can change and you can actually improve your ovarian reserve? Well, I’m not going to go into that in this video, but if you do want more information on that, then you can check out this video right here to learn more. So, as we’re talking about age and what’s the right time, then you have to determine for yourself, where do you want to start trying? What’s the right age for you? Now, again, you might not have that answer today, or you may have already started trying. It’s important for us to understand the impact that our decisions are going to have.
So if you want to try to start getting pregnant in your late twenties or early thirties or beyond, then we have to understand what sort of impact that’s going to have on our fertility and reproductive health. Now, everything you’re going to read is going to say that as you age, your chance of conception goes down, your chance of complication goes up, your likelihood of miscarriage only rises. But that doesn’t have to be true. The reality is that there’s a lot that you can do to improve your health and become more fertile in your late thirties or even your forties than you were before because you make the right decisions. Again, I’m not going to talk about that in this video, but I do have a video completely devoted to that. And if you want to watch it and learn more about that, then you can check out that link right here.
The choice of when you start to try to get pregnant or grow your family is completely up to you. And the reality is in this day and age, we’re waiting longer and longer to have our families and grow our families. But those choices have implications. Now, the things that we need to consider as we’re making those choices is, how many children do we want to have? In what timeframe do we want to have them? Meaning, how many kids do we want to have? How close together? What ages? When do we want to stop trying to have children and grow our family? Because we don’t want to be a certain age when we have kids that are one or two or three.
These are not only questions that are important to ask yourself, but they’re also important to have a conversation between you and your partner. These decisions can’t be made in isolation. There are two of you that are part of this process. And you all have to be on the same page, or at least I believe that it’s really important for you both to be on the same page. So when is the right time? There might be some disagreements. You might say one age, someone might say something else. The important thing here is that you talk about it and you come to some understanding and agreement about when is the right time for you just are trying, and more importantly, how much time you’re going give it while you’re trying before you seek additional help and support.
I also want to mention for all of you who haven’t started trying, or maybe you even have, but you know you have a medical condition that should be accounted for and needs support. This is a bigger reason why you should start the preconception planning sooner. If you know you have an underlying hormonal issue, irregular menstrual cycles, you have an auto-immune condition, whatever health concerns you have, if you know that things are not right and that you can feel better than you do today if you change things, then this is the time to make those changes. Now is the time to get the support that you need so that you can make changes and make that process easier for yourself. So if you are fatigued, you don’t sleep well, the list is endless, quite frankly, if you’re not feeling 100% and you know you have a health history that needs attention and care, get it now to make your future of trying to have a child much easier for yourself.
And for all of you who have been trying, if those things that you know are underlying conditions, haven’t been treated, then take a step back. This is part of the taking a step back process. Take a moment, take a breath and make sure that those things get treated and addressed so that you could make your journey easier. So the best time to get pregnant is when you are ready for that. But I always say the best time to start getting pregnant and preparing your body is now. Why wait? Why put off what you can do today for tomorrow? Do it now. Make the changes now. All too often, many of the couples who joined my hope fertility coaching program have come to me as a last resort. They’ve tried all of these things and they haven’t been getting the results that they’ve wanted because they haven’t been addressing the root issues, and that’s where we dive into.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can make a different choice. You can start the preconception treatment and planning now to make the future of trying to get pregnant easier for yourself. A very straightforward and easy way to get started to make the necessary changes is by creating your own fertility wheel. I know that you don’t even know what that is, but I created a free training to help you create your own fertility wheel so that you could learn what parts of your health and reproductive function need additional support so you know where to focus. If you want to check out that free training and learn how you can support your own fertility, then you can check out that training right here.
So I want to hear from all of you. Have you started trying? How old are you? Do you need a different approach? Comment below and let me know. Did you do preconception work before you started trying? Or are you planning on doing some preconception work because you’re ready to get started to have a family in a year’s time or whatever that might be? I want to hear from you comment below. Let me know your journey. Let me know what your plans are. Let me know how I can support you. If you liked this video, give me a thumbs up. If you’re not a subscriber to my YouTube channel, you have to be, so hit that bell to subscribe and get notified when I put out a new video for all of you. And until the next one, stay fertile.