If you are approaching 40 or over 40yo and you want to have a baby, I have a couple of very helpful tips for you as a naturopathic doctor and natural fertility expert. Having a baby in your 40s is not the same as having a baby in your 20s. And since time is not on your side, just trying things out and seeing what happens isn’t a good strategy. We can do better and in this episode I show you how you can set yourself up for success.

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Key Takeways

3:34 Making informed fertility decisions

7:08 Perimenopause and fertility

14:49 Comprehensive testing for fertility

18:23 Optimizing fertility in your 40s

Memorable Quotes

"Pregnancy over 40 is very different than having a baby in your 20s. You are closer to menopause than you are to puberty, so things are working very differently in your 40s."

"When you're over 40 trying to have a baby, don't do any guessing. You don't have time to struggle. I recommend doing thorough testing before even thinking about conceiving."

"If you now decided you want to have a baby at 40, the responsible thing is to do some really thorough testing and get your partner involved from day one. Both of you need to have comprehensive testing done to optimize your chances."

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Sperm quality starts to slowly decline at the age of 35 for males. But by 45, we see a big drop off. And so DNA fragmentation, motility, concentration, morphology, all of those things which also contribute to miscarriages, to complications in pregnancy, they also all increase. And so now if we have this egg that's not at its prime and then we have the sperm, that's okay, but kind of sluggish. The chances of it working are very, very slim. So that my mentor said is like, I'd rather have a really young egg and an old sperm because the young egg will make up for the DNA fragmentations or any quote, unquote, faults of the sperm. Pregnancy is a natural process. So if it's not happening or if it's not sticking, something is missing. After having a family member go through infertility and experiencing a miscarriage myself, I realized how little support and education women have around infertility. I want to change that. Jane I'm Dr. Jane Levesque. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert. Tune in every Tuesday at 9am for insightful case studies, expert interviews, and practical tips on how you can optimize fertility naturally. If you've been struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women's health issues, or you just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life, this show is for you. All right, ladies, today I want to talk to you about pregnancy. Over 40. I have a lot of women who are in approaching 40, early 40s, maybe even close to your mid-40s, are still trying to have a baby. Or maybe you just decided that, man, I'm ready to have a baby. And I didn't really want to have a baby until I was, you know, younger. And now all of a sudden, I have this urge, is it. Can I do it? Is it too late? So I want to give you a couple of tips in terms of how I approach pregnancy over 40. And the biggest thing here is having a baby when you're in your 40s is very different than having a baby in your 20s. And that is because you are closer to menopause than you are closer to puberty. So things are working very, very differently in your 40s than they are in your 20s. And obviously, this is something that I help my patients do all the time. And I have seen mentors do some incredible things that, like, I don't want to spread false hope, but I also don't want you to just cross your fingers and hope it turns out and leave it In God's hand, if it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. I'm all for faith. I'm all for, you know, supporting women, but I just don't think it needs to be. Cross your fingers and let's see what happens. I actually think it's a lot more in your control than you think. So I'm going to share a couple stats with you, and then just a couple things that I would do to make sure I have zero regrets at the end of this journey. Because at the end of the day, there are no guarantees, right? There are no guarantees. But like I said, if I think about myself and having my kids, I would not give up on that journey. Now, what I mean by that is I wouldn't give up figuring out how to conceive, but I also would want to make sure it's something that I do really well and something that makes sense when I have patients who come to me who've had five, six, seven rounds of IVF and with very little outcomes. That's not what I mean by don't give up. That's the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing and expecting different results. So my hope is that even if you've gone through one round or two rounds of ivf, you put a break on it and say, something is wrong, something is missing. I need to get more information, and I hope to be that source of information for you, because we can cause a lot of damage just repeating the same thing over and over again. And. And if you've just put your resources in the right place, then your outcome of having a successful pregnancy is so much higher, and you might still need ivf and you might still need some sort of conventional intervention. But we want to be very methodical and logical in the way that we're making our decision. We want to be making our decisions based on data, not feelings. And because fertility is such a highly emotional state, a lot of the times we're making decisions from our emotions and our feelings versus data. So I hope to provide you with some data and some reasoning so then you can hopefully achieve your goal of having a baby. So, pregnancy over 40. A couple things to remember. The first things that I said is you are much closer to menopause than you are to puberty, which means you are not in your prime to have a baby. It is possible to have a baby, but you are not set up for success. It's like Olympic athlete at 20 years old versus Olympic athlete at 40 years old. We see a lot of 20 year olds. We don't see a lot of 40 year olds, but there's still some monsters out there that can perform really well. And there's, you know, genetically, there's experience and maturity. All of that adds up. And so if you're in your 40s trying to have a baby, my assumption is that you probably know who you are, you probably have a career that you've maybe walked away from because it was super stressful. And now you have something, you know, that's really special. You have more financial security, you have a partner. Like, you are more certain in who you are. And there's a lot of pros to that. When having a baby versus, you know, in your 20s, you might have zero financial security. You might be doing things to people please. As opposed to like, no, this is what I really want. So I think that there's a lot of pros to it and we can absolutely do it. We just can't wing it. You can wing it. Obviously, you can, you can do whatever you want. I'm just telling you as a, you know, natural fertility expert and the naturopathic doctor and what I've seen as a clinician, I wouldn't recommend it. I don't think it's a very good strategy, especially when you're getting older. So the menopause piece, I'm not saying this to scare you, but it's actually, I think it's just a huge lack of knowledge. So women actually start their perimenopausal symptoms about 15 years before their mom went through menopause. So if your mom went through menopause at 50, you're going to start perimenopausal symptoms at 35. If your mom went through menopause at 55, you're going to be starting perimenopausal symptoms at 40. Now, the problem that we're seeing is that most women are now going through menopause earlier and earlier. And you may have had a mom that maybe passed away when she was young, and then now it's important to know why she passed away. Because if it was some sort of cancer, especially if it was a reproductive cancer, lots of red flags should be going up because you should be getting assessed and understanding the genetic implications of that. And so your mom might be had going into menopause much younger. So if she went into menopause at 45, you might be starting your symptoms of per menopause as early as 30. And so we are seeing a lot of premature ovarian insufficiencies. In younger women. And that's a topic for another day, but it is. There's a lot going on in our environment and the stress and the oxidative stress that we are seeing women going into menopause earlier and earlier. But the reason that I want to share this with you guys, this was a big aha moment for me. I've been learning a lot from Dr. Leah Hetchman, one of my mentors, a phenomenal practitioner out of Australia, that we think menopause is just these one to two years that you have the big shift in the crazy hormones. You know, all the hormones basically go. But in reality, you have subtle changes for 15 years leading up to that point. And those subtle changes could be your skin doesn't feel as tight as it used to, your muscles don't feel as strong, they're a little bit flabby. Or maybe you have some cellulite right where we see the wrinkles come in. And of course, now we live in a society, well, I'll just get Botox. But in reality, the process hasn't changed. Right. If you stop getting Botox, the skin would come back because the cell turnover is not as quick anymore. The ubiquinol levels have started to decline. Because that's just the natural decline of ubiquinol, as you know, you might be aware of, is really important for egg quality. And that's one of the things we talk about, taking in higher doses when we are struggling with egg quality, the right form at the right time, and making sure that our absorption works. But things are not on your side. So you've started to experience hormonal fluctuations of some sort, I bet, for a while now. And most of us are not in tune enough to really know when those fluctuations started to happen. Because it's not like one month your period is great, and then the next month it's completely off, and then the following month it's different. And the changes are subtle. It's like I'm starting to lose a little bit more blood than I used to, or I'm getting a bit more clotting, or I do have a bit more breast tenderness. I do have a little more, but more brain fog, huh? It is really hard for me to lose weight. I had a little bit of extra treats over the holidays, but now this belly is just kind of hanging around and I had to work really hard for it. Those are all changes on the back end that are happening with your hormones that are basically associated with perimenopause. Now, the reason that I say this Is not to freak you out, but to help you understand that the process doesn't. It's not happening overnight. And so I'll give you some statistics in a second that it's not going to be an overnight approach to reverse it. And so there's a very limited amount of time that you have when you're over 40 to make sure that you're using that time wisely. Recorded a podcast that says, you know, go slow to go fast. And the point of that is sometimes we rush into things like IVF thinking that that's going to be fast approach, where in reality it actually slows you way down because you failed the cycle. Now your body needs to recover. Now you failed another cycle. I can't get any eggs. What the. If you took that same time and you actually just prepared yourself, you ran some functional lab testing, you looked at your nutrients, you looked at your gut, you looked, you optimized everything. And then you went for an IVF cycle and it just worked. Go slow to go fast. And sometimes, of course, a natural pregnancy is possible, and that's. Everybody is different. It's a case by case basis. And I very much just draw out the timeline of what I feel comfortable as a practitioner to work with you to help you get to your results. Okay. Because we don't have years, we have months. But, you know, you don't have to go to the doctor tomorrow. And because he said your eggs are. They're all bad and not really how it works. So let me try to bring you back in pregnancy over 40. Two things that are really, really important. You guys, we don't want to do any guessing. And then we do need to bring the partner on board. So when we're Approaching pregnancy over 40, I don't care if you do not need to wait to struggle because you don't have time to struggle. I would be doing testing before you even thinking about conceiving. And I would be doing that for two reasons. Number one, you don't have the time to try for six months and see what happens, because a lot of the times women will have a hard time getting pregnant at that time. And the second reason is your miscarriage rate is really, really high. So I'm going to just share this and I walk through. So if you're watching on YouTube, you can see it. Maternal age from 20 to 24, your rate of pregnancy loss is 11%. 25 to 29 years old, it goes up to 12%. Still very reasonable. 30 to 34, we jumped up to 15%. 35 to 39, we're now 25%. So the older you are, the higher the risk of pregnancy loss. The next jump, 40 to 44, the increase in pregnancy loss is now 51%. So basically 51% chance of having a miscarriage when you're between the ages of 40 to 44. And if you're higher than 45, that percentage risk goes up to 93%. So when women, when I talk to you in the DMs and you are, I'm 41, I'm 42, I'm 43, I want to have a baby, I didn't want to miss my chance and I'm just going to start trying and see what happens because I haven't had any issues yet. The odds are not again in favor. The odds are against you. And so what I say is if you now decided that you want to have a baby and it's, you're 40 years old, the responsible thing to do, if you will, be to do some really thorough testing and to get your partner involved from day one. And the reason that we want to get the partner involved because if you are 40 and your partner, I'm assuming, is sometimes in, is probably in his 40s, but maybe even closer to his 50s. Sperm quality starts to slowly decline at the age of 35 for males. But by 45, we see a big drop off. And so DNA fragmentation, motility, concentration, morphology, all of those things which also contribute to miscarriages, to complications in pregnancy, they also all increase. And so now if we have this egg that's not at its prime and then we have the sperm, that's okay, but kind of sluggish. The chances of it working are very, very slim. So another thing that my mentor said is like, I'd rather have a really young egg and an old sperm because the young egg will make up for the DNA fragmentations or any quote, unquote faults of the sperm versus when we have, like the outcomes are better for pregnancy when we have a really high quality egg. But the like, the sperm is rubbish because the egg ends up doing, you know, 90% of the work, 95% of the work, versus having a poor quality egg and really fantastic sperm, you know, because the egg just won't be able to carry. You need a lot of energy for reproduction. And so when we're in our 40s, we need to bring both of the things up because we need to make it as good as possible to decrease the chances of miscarriages, obviously for the health of the baby, decrease any complications during pregnancy. So that's the first. You know, the both of you guys need to have thorough testing done. And when I say thorough testing, I don't mean, like my conventional doctor said, everything is fine and my AMH is low. And so I'm over here just trying to take some supplements and hoping that things, you know, like, I'll just start trying. And I would be looking for an expert to help you understand, like, what am I really getting into, you know, and because pregnancy is the hardest thing that the female body will ever do. It's harder to run a marathon in your 40s than it is in your 20s, right? It's harder to recover. It's harder to. For everything. So we want to go in knowing exactly where our body is at, looking at a very thorough blood panel, looking at all the nutrient levels, looking at methylation. It's a biochemical process that happens in every single cell of the body. It is how our DNA repairs, it is how we detoxify, it is how we energy. If you don't understand how your methylation works, which I don't expect you to because you're not a doctor, but if your doctor doesn't know how your methylation panel works, then, like, chances of them helping you and having that pregnancy be successful is not as high. It's always possible, it's just not as high. And so we want a good blood work. We got nutrient analysis, we have a methylation panel. We're testing and screening for infection. So we're looking at the gut and the microbial imbalances. I'm looking at the vaginal microbiome. I'm looking at the environmental toxins, toxic load. Because if there's things that are really, really high, we need to get that out of the system. It doesn't need to be perfect, but we need to get it out of the system to optimize the mitochondrial function, your energy levels, all of that stuff. And then, of course, we need to do that for the male, because if he is a source of a microbial infection or microbial imbalance, or his nutrient levels are off, or his methylation, his sperm just won't be as good. And then the egg has to carry the sperm. And usually when the egg is already on the lower quality side, it just can't carry the sperm. So we need the sperm to be as optimal as possible. So once you have the testing, let's talk about the timeline of what's, you know, a sweet spot. I would say minimum three months. It very much depends on how old you Are. But it's minimum three months for you to do some prep work. And ideally about six months. It is going to depend on, you know, what comes up on the labs, how quickly you implement, how much your body responds, how many biohacks and things you can implement at the same time. You know, I have people who are ready to go, and they have no issues taking 20 supplements twice a day. They have no issues going into the sauna every day or doing the red light or the castor oil packs and meditating and, you know, putting their phone away. And then I have people who it's a really big change for. And so we need to go a little bit slower, lower. There's no right or wrong. I'm just saying we have a limited time frame. And what I usually do is just plan it out for my people once we have the labs and say, hey, this is a pretty nasty case of parasites, we're going to need to take three good months. And then this is where I might be pulling in pharmaceuticals, because pharmaceuticals are going to work faster than herbs, but we still need to optimize liver inflammation, blood sugar, dieting, all of that stuff. So every couple is going to be very, very different. But after six months of doing some work, we should be very close to our goal and we should be considering what are we going to do? Are we going to be doing, you know, a medicated cycle, just a medicated time cycle? Or maybe this is a good opportunity to look into IVF and doing just a mini IVF with very low stimulus to pull out and optimize the eggs that we can. So then we can, you know, that whole process, we can start it. Every case is different. It's just very much what comes up, the resources that you have the time to come, like, how quickly you act. And it's changing the plan as you go. Meaning I can say, like, okay, in six months, this is what we're going to do. But you never know how the body is going to respond. And so if it's responding really well and there's good things and you know, because we use pharmaceuticals and we progesterone you do, and the body is moving well, then that timeline might be a little bit shorter or that timeline might be a little bit longer because the body is hurting and you have a lot of stress and you have to figure out how to get out of your job or something else came up. You know, a parent passed away. Like, you never know. Point being is, when you are in your 40s trying to have a baby, it's very possible. We just want to be methodical because the risk of miscarriage is very, very high and the quality of the egg is not the same as it was in your 20s. So we need to make sure that we do a lot of things to optimize. Usually just doing one or two things is not enough. It's, you have to do the acupuncture, you're going to do the red light, you're going to do all the herbs, you're going to do the castor oil packs, you're going to do the meditation and talking to your ovaries and spiritual journey. Like, you have to do all of it because you're trying to have a baby closer to menopause than puberty. And so the odds are not in your favor, but we can very much do it. It's just I want to set you guys up for success and set realistic expectations. So that's what I would say. If you're trying to conceive over the age of 40, let's just make sure we do the testing ahead of time. Bring the partner on board. And then you need to be working with experts. Because if the last thing that I will say about experts, because I've had a lot of patients that are turned down and are basically told that you'll never have a baby, you're crazy. You should just use donor eggs or just give up this journey. That person is not going to help you. Maybe there's some truth to what they're saying, but if they're not even listening to you, then they're not really going to help you. So you want to find experts and practitioners who are going to explain things to you that are going to listen to you and they're not going to feed you, you know, fake hope and unrealistic expectations, but they will show you the path and they'll help you feel like you are part of the journey. Instead of just being told, you know what you're going to being told that, like, this is unrealistic or like, you can totally do it. Just meditate every day. Maybe that's a single missing piece for you. But I find in the 40s, with my patients, we have to do a lot. Both partners. Like I said, you're closer to menopause than you are to your puberty. So find practitioners who really you align with their values. You believe in the work that they're doing, you feel supported. Buy them and you trust them. Because if you don't, your nervous system is going to go. And when your nervous system just tightens up like that. It's not relaxed. Your cortisol is elevated and cortisol is now going to screw up your progesterone levels and your estrogen levels and all this other stuff. So you have to work with a practitioner that you like, you trust and the values align. And if you know listening to this podcast, what I'm saying to you aligns. And you'd like to see if either myself or one of my practitioners can help, I'd love to invite you on a Fertility Clarity call. There is a link. Reach out to us on Instagram and just let us know that you listen to this podcast and you'd love to connect with one of our practitioners. And we're happy to invite you on a free Fertility Clarity call where we can chat to you about our process and see if we are the right team of people to help you. So thank you ladies so much for listening. I hope this gives you the tools and the guidance for what you need to do next to help you get closer to your family goals. Thank you so much for listening. To Read the full show notes of this episode, including summary, timestamps, guest quotes, and any resources that were mentioned on the episode. Visit drjanelevesque.com forward slash podcast and if you're getting value from these episodes, I'd love it if you took 2 minutes to share it with a friend. Rate and leave me a review at Rate this podcast.com forward/doctorjane. The reviews will help with the discoverability of the show and who knows, I might share your review on my next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in and let's make your fertility journey your healing journey.