Guest Author - Ellen Winick

You’ve heard that as you age, the quality and quantity of your eggs decreases and once you reach a certain age, your chances of getting pregnant are greatly reduced.

So, when is the optimum time to get pregnant? How do I know how many good eggs I have left? And, should I think about getting pregnant even before I might be ready, to make sure I don’t miss my window of opportunity?

These are all good questions which might be more easily answered with information from a simple test your doctor can perform. The test is an antral follicle count determined by ultrasound. This test helps count how many eggs are left in your ovaries so you can better understand where you are in your childbearing years and when your ability to get pregnant will begin to decline.

For example, if an ultrasound count reveals an antral follicle count of 20, you have about 15 years to conceive a child and about 24 years until menopause. If you have a count of 10, you have closer to 4 years to get pregnant and 13 years before menopause.

With the increasing age of women who are trying to get pregnant along with the rise in infertility, this test may one day become as common place as an annual pap smear. Right now, few doctors administer them without prompting and guidance from their patients. If your doctor is unsure about this test, you will need to be prepared to explain what you are asking him/her to do and why.

To better prepare yourself for a discussion with your doctor, you may want to read up on this procedure and its use. A very clear explanation of how and why to use antral follicle counting is explained in Sherman Silber’s book “How to Get Pregnant”, copyright 2005.

Armed with information from an antral follicle count, you may be better able to determine where you are in your childbearing years and whether or not to take some action now. That action might look like having a child now, freezing some of your eggs for a future time, or even freezing your ovaries to postpone conception until a later time. All of these are options to explore if you are concerned that time is running out.