2023-11-08 05:00:00
No less than 219 Quebec women aged 45 and over gave birth last year, a rapidly growing trend which entails many risks for the health of the mother and the baby, but which also allows a last chance for women to achieve this. dream.
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Priority to career, fertility problems, late romantic encounter: all kinds of reasons explain this increasingly clear societal trend. In 2022, 219 Quebec women aged over 45 gave birth, according to data from the Institute of Statistics of Quebec. Among them, 22 mothers were even over 50 years old.
“If I had to start once more, I wouldn’t change anything,” assures Marie-Ève Barette, who became a mother at 46 in 2018.
Women aged 45 and over still represent a small share of births (0.27% in 2022), but their proportion has doubled in 10 years (0.13% in 2012). In 1989, only 12 Quebec women gave birth following age 45.
There are also more women aged 40 to 44 who give birth. Last year, they represented 4.4% of deliveries, more than double that of 2002 (2%).
However, getting pregnant following the age of 40 carries all kinds of increased risks (for mother and baby), specialist doctors warn:
Risks associated with pregnancy following 40
Miscarriage
40 years and over: 1 in 3 pregnancies
45 years and over: 1 in 2 pregnancies
Diabetes
Hypertension (preeclampsia)
Pregnancy diabetes
For the baby:
Growth retardation
Prematurity
Anemia
Mort in utero
Metabolic imbalance (due to diabetes)
*All these risks depend on the woman’s state of health
Around half of deliveries are also done by cesarean section following the age of 45, which is twice as much as the general average at 25%.
“Very at risk”
“We follow up, screen for problems, but it’s certain that the older you are, the more risks there are,” summarizes the Dr Richard Brown, director of obstetrics and gynecology at the McGill University Health Center.
For three months, a third of this specialist’s pregnant patients were over 40 years old.
“Being pregnant for the first time at 45 and over, these are women potentially at very risk for their health and for the baby too, also underlines the Dre Lucie Morin, head of the gynecology-obstetrics department at Sainte-Justine hospital. We just need to set the record straight. Yes it’s doable, yes we will support you, but it won’t be easy.”
PHOTO PROVIDED BY CHU Sainte-Justine
In theory, older women do not have more monitoring during pregnancy. But as soon as a complication arises, follow-up is adapted. Heavy stomach, lack of sleep, hip and back pain: pregnancy can be difficult to manage physically at an older age.
“And it’s not just the pregnancy. Afterwards, the baby wakes up every two or three hours, underlines the Dre Morin. It’s hard to stay up all night! It’s still an investment.”
Not refunded
In Quebec, assisted reproduction trials are reimbursed up to age 41, following which the chances of getting pregnant are considered too low. As a result, many women in their 40s who are hoping for a child must pay tens of thousands of dollars.
Around 80% of late pregnancies are the result of in vitro fertilization, estimates the Dr Brown. Thanks to hormone treatments, women who are heading towards menopause can even become pregnant, underlines the Dre Morin.
“From the moment there is assisted medical procreation, the sky is the limit»notes the specialist who has already followed a 58-year-old pregnant woman.
Thanks to contraceptives
According to a sociologist and demographer, current statistics of late pregnancies demonstrate that women have control over fertility.
“Women can choose to have their children whenever they want. In the 1960s, women who had children following age 45 were mistakes. There are practically no errors today,” underlines Benoit Laplante, professor at the National Institute of Scientific Research.
Indeed, late-term pregnancies fell in the 1960s, with the arrival of contraception. They have been on the rise since the 1990s.
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