Few women want to or attempt to have babies after the age of 45, but the few who do manage this feat face a higher risk of complications. Some of these complications include gestational diabetes and high blood pressure throughout the pregnancy.
Preterm births and placenta previa are also common in older women who are pregnant. The older a woman is the higher the chance that she is not fully healthy and her body is not properly prepared for caring a child.
Because women seem to be delaying pregnancy these days in order to pursue a career or even because they are waiting to get married, researchers have been focusing on the possible risks to mother and child when pregnancy occurs between ages 35 and 40. The focus of this research has not been on women over 40 or those rare women who choose to get pregnant after 45.
In the women who have been studied over age 45 there have been a high rate of cesarean births, premature births and breech births, there have also been several cases that the women were made pregnant using donor eggs and in those cases the pregnancies were actually healthier than if the women had used their own eggs.
By age 45 most women are entering menopause and their bodies are crossing into the stage where childbearing is behind them. Their hormones and the very essence of the female body is waning, this is not the time to attempt to nourish another life.
