Pregnancy Over Age 50

Pregnancy over age 50 has become more possible for women, due to recent advances in assisted reproductive technology, in particular egg donation. Typically, a woman's fecundity ends with menopause, which by definition is 12 consecutive months without having had a period. Perimenopause usually begins between ages 40 and 51 and fertility can and often does end at this stage also. This is when the periods become irregular and eventually stop altogether, but even when periods are still regular, the egg quality of women in their forties is typically dramatically lower than in younger women, making the likelihood of conceiving a healthy baby also dramatically lower, particularly after age 42. Men, in contrast, generally remain fertile throughout their lives, although the risk of genetic defects is greatly increased due to the paternal age effect.

In the United States, between 1997 and 1999, 539 births were reported among mothers over age 50, with 194 being over 55. According to statistics from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, in the Britain, more than 20 babies are born to women over age 50 per year through in-vitro fertilization with the use of donor oocytes (eggs).

Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara is the oldest verified mother; she was aged 66 years 358 days when she gave birth to twins; she was 130 days older than Adriana Iliescu, who gave birth in 2005 to a baby girl. The children were conceived through IVF with donor eggs. The oldest verified mother to conceive naturally (listed currently in the Guinness Records) is Dawn Brooke (UK); she gave birth to a son at the age of 59 years in 1997.