Don’t Say Infertility Just Yet

Most healthy couples who are worried because the woman is not pregnant after a year of trying will conceive during the second year, a new study shows.

Couples should not rush to fertility clinics and doctors should not intervene too quickly with treatments unless there are obvious reasons for the couple’s not conceiving, said the study’s leader, Dr. David Dunson, a researcher at the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Infertility is defined as failure to get pregnant after a year of trying.

Many fertility clinics report couples coming in at younger ages, but the new research shows that even couples in their late 30s have a 91% chance of getting pregnant naturally within two years.

The study, which analyzed details of 782 couples from seven European cities, was presented Wednesday at a meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.

The study found that only 9% of women ages 35 to 39 failed to get pregnant after two years, provided their partners were younger than 40.

When the men were older than 40, 16% of the women couldn’t get pregnant after two years.