You’ve spent your whole adult life trying not to get pregnant. Then it hits you. It may be that all your friends are having babies, or you saw a child in the supermarket that made you long for your own soft, cooing piece of heaven, but how old you are plays an important part in determining your chances of becoming a Mum.
The speed at which female fertility declines has been highlighted by the first study to track a woman’s supply of eggs from conception to the menopause. The average 30-year-old will have just 12 per cent – barely an eighth – of her eggs left, the research shows. By her 40th birthday the situation is even more bleak, with just 3 per cent of the two million or so eggs she was born with remaining. Only about 450 of the two million eggs will fully mature over a woman’s lifetime. Many others will start to mature before dying off.