by Melanie Denyer

Created on: November 02, 2007

Is there such a thing as the 'best' time to get pregnant? Throughout my twenties I pondered this question and asked many friends their advice. In the abstract, the advice I received was that the best time to get pregnant would be once you've found your soul mate, have enough disposable income and a big enough home to cope with the volume of toys and other paraphernalia that seem to accompany the average baby.

And whatever the theory may be, one thing is clear: going purely on statistics, the best time for many to have a baby is getting to be later and later in life. The average age of first-time mothers in both the UK and the US has increased since 1971, and is even higher among married mothers, suggesting a strong tendency in many women to wait for the 'right' conditions to exist before starting their family.

With newspaper stories of women in their sixties having IVF and giving birth, it seems that the 'best' time could be almost infinitely extended, so long as the will and the medical technology are there.

But the stories of 67-year-old mothers giving birth hide the sad realities that await many couples trying to conceive for the first time: people generally don't know they have fertility problems until they try for that first baby, by which point they may already be too late.

For example, 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage and while most women suffering a miscarriage will go on to have a perfectly healthy pregnancy next time round, a number will suffer the heartbreak of recurrent miscarriages (medically defined as three or more successive miscarriages without a successful pregnancy). For some of these, blood tests can reveal the cause of the problem - often a clotting factor disorder or a rhesus incompatibility - and for these the doctors may be able to offer hope. Yet even Professor Lesley Regan of St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, a worldwide authority on the causes and treatment of recurrent miscarriage, admits that doctors simply don't know all the causes of miscarriage, and therefore in many cases cannot offer a solution, or the hope of a successful pregnancy.

What of those couples who can't conceive? IVF is not a miracle cure, and does not work for everyone. Often, the couples resorting to IVF are older, in their mid-thirties or early forties, when female fertility is known to be rapidly decreasing and the chance of a successful outcome to pregnancy substantially reduced. With the introduction of over-the-counter fertility tests in the UK last year, we can now check the time on our biological clock and we can, if over 30, ill afford not to. In an interview with the BBC last year, Professor Melanie Davies of University College London Hospital put the facts quite bluntly: if you're 29 and you and your partner are thinking that maybe you'd like a family some day, the time to start is probably now.

Most parents will acknowledge, if asked, that there probably never is a 'right' time to have a baby, let alone a 'best' one - there's always something you could improve to make your home and family the perfect environment in which to raise your child. Babies wreak havoc on your life and home, and things will quite literally never be the same again. As a mum of one who waited until 33 before trying to start a family, and who suffered 5 miscarriages before successfully carrying her first baby to term, my personal answer to the question of when the 'best' time is to have a baby is simply to follow your instincts... but try not to leave it too late.

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