Putting off baby
If there’s one thing couples contemplating starting families later in life should keep in mind, it’s that despite advances in fertility technology in recent decades, there are still no guarantees. Experts on a panel Wednesday at the Harvard School of Public Health said media reports of women giving birth at age 45 or 50 might perpetuate a misperception that getting pregnant when you’re older is easy and that there are no consequences to delaying the start of a family. The reality is a rapid decline in fertility from a woman’s early 30s, when the chances of conceiving during a single menstrual cycle are 15 to 25 percent, to her mid-40s, when the chances are just 1 or 2 percent, said Jeffrey Ecker, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School. “People plan pregnancy for this time in life,” Ecker said. “[Getting pregnant] doesn’t always happen this way, and becomes...