Chances of Having Down Syndrome Baby at 48

Lee Robinson gave nativity to a good for you son, Toll, last calendar week. She'south 44.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Birth rate for women age 40-44 increased 4 percent in 2008 from 2007
• Practiced: "Whatsoever can get wrong goes incorrect at an increased charge per unit" in an older pregnancy
• Risks include miscarriage, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, chromosome disorders

(CNN) -- Lee Robinson wasn't all that excited near having a baby. Information technology's not that she didn't want 1, it'southward but that she and her husband, Claude, were happy with their busy lives in Thomson, Georgia, where she's a high schoolhouse instructor and he's a caterer.

Life rolled merrily along until 1 solar day, at historic period 44, Robinson discovered to her keen shock that she was pregnant. When not one but two pregnancy tests confirmed the news, she plastered herself to the internet to effigy out how risky this pregnancy was for her and her baby.

What she found online wasn't comforting. A slew of statistics about the high risks of nascence defects for the baby and pregnancy-related diseases for her scared the wits out of her.

"I'd be less than normal if I didn't think this was pretty severe, life-threatening stuff," Robinson says. "All kinds of things run through your mind."

These days, more women are finding themselves in Robinson's situation. The birth rate for women historic period 40-44 increased 4 percent in 2008 from 2007, co-ordinate to the Centers for Illness Control and Prevention. Dissimilarity that to the birth rate for women beneath age 40, which went downwards equally much equally iii percent from 2007 to 2008.

Robinson would anxiously pour out her worries to friends on Facebook.

"[Lee] is battling negative thinking," she wrote. "Please keep peppering her with 'healthy, normal babies born to twoscore-something mothers' stories because she actually needs to hear/read them repeatedly right at present."

Ane of Robinson's former students told her "everything is gonna be fine." A higher friend told her, "Y'all and the baby volition be not bad." But were Robinson and her friends right to be so optimistic?

"Whatever can go incorrect goes wrong at an increased charge per unit for a woman who is older starting pregnancy," says Dr. Alan Fleischman, medical managing director for the March of Dimes.

And so just how scary is it for a adult female over 40 to have a babe? We asked physicians at the March of Dimes and the American Higher of Obstetrics and Gynecologists to ready the numbers out for us.

one. Higher run a risk of miscarriage

At historic period 20: ane in x women
At age 35: 1 in 5 women
At age 40: one in iii women
At age 45: 1 in 2 women

Noncancerous tumors chosen fibroids and endometriosis, the abnormal growth of the lining of a adult female'due south uterus, can pb to a miscarriage.

"Evolutionarily women generally reproduced in their teens and 20s. Centuries ago nosotros didn't alive much longer than our 40s and 50s," Fleischman says. "We haven't inverse the basic biological science of how our ovaries and uterus piece of work."

2. Higher take chances of any chromosomal disorder

At historic period 20: 1 in 526 births
At historic period 30: 1 in 385 births
At age forty: i in 66 births
At age 45: 1 in 21 births

Women are built-in with all the eggs they'll ever have. As a woman ages, her eggs also age.

"All genetic abnormalities increment every bit the egg gets older," says Fleischman. "The eggs are stored in the ovaries, and in that location is a potential for change over time."

3. College risk of Downward syndrome

At historic period 25: 1 in i,250 births
At age 30: 1 in ane,000 births
At age 35: 1 in 400 births
At age twoscore: 1 in 100 births
At age 45: 1 in 30 births
At historic period 49: 1 in 10 births

As a adult female ages, the chance of delivering a baby with Down syndrome increases. Down's syndrome is a genetic disorder frequently caused by an mistake in cell sectionalization. There are multiple types of Down syndrome, and the exact cause is not known.

four. College risk of gestational diabetes

At age 20: 22 in i,000 women
At age 25: 36 in ane,000 women
At age xxx: 51 in i,000 women
At historic period 35: 67 in 1,000 women
At historic period 40: 84 in ane,000 women

Pregnancy stresses the body, requiring the pancreas to produce more than insulin. In older women, having a baby can trigger diabetes during pregnancy.

"Nosotros like to think of pregnancy as a stress test to the woman," Fleischman says. "Every bit you get older your pancreas is less able to respond to those stressors."

5. Higher risk of preeclampsia

At age xx: 38 in one,000 women
At age 25: 37 in one,000 women
At age xxx: 36 in ane,000 women
At age 35: 39 in 1,000 women
At age forty: 48 in 1,000 women

Preeclampsia is a sometimes deadly condition of pregnancy marked by high blood pressure level and poly peptide in the urine. Ofttimes when a mother has preeclampsia, the baby needs to be delivered prematurely to save the lives of mother and babe.

"Women equally they get into their 40s may also have some hypertension already," Fleischman says. "And if they do, they have a higher risk of that beingness exacerbated during pregnancy."

Advantages of beingness an older mom

Working women who have children later in life are frequently able to spend more fourth dimension with their families because they're in a better position to negotiate flexible schedules, according to research past Elizabeth Gregory, writer of the book, "Ready: Why Women Are Embracing the New Afterward Motherhood," and director of the Women's Studies Plan at the University of Houston.

"Women study that the clout they've established at work in the years before they have kids gives them a bargaining flake that they wouldn't have had" at an before stage of their career, Gregory says.

Plus, women who wait to accept children make more money and are better able to provide for their families, co-ordinate to Gregory's analysis of 2000 census data.

Gregory looked at women in their early 40s and plant sizable salary differences based on when they'd had their children. She found that those who'd had babies in their mid-20s had salaries in the mid-$40,000 range, only those who waited to take babies until their mid- to tardily-30s had salaries that averaged in the $70,000 range.

The reason, she says, is simple. "In one case kids arrive, information technology's much harder for women to continue to climb the career ladder, so if they first having babies earlier, they tend to get stuck down on the ladder," she says.

Last week, Robinson gave birth to a good for you male child named Toll, and now she and her husband are thinking virtually having another child, even though she's 44 years old.

"It'southward really overwhelming to retrieve I never idea I was going to be a mom," Robinson says. "We're both just absolutely in love with this little baby."

CNN'due south Sabriya Rice contributed to this report.

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Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/04/22/pregnancy.over.40/index.html

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