New Trend Has Women Delaying Motherhood

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Whether you're busy with school, a career, or you're just not ready, many women are waiting until they're a little older to have babies. Jude Love had her boys when she was 33 and 35 years old.

"I wasn't quite ready to settle down, I was having too much fun in London, when we got married at 30 we started to try, it took us a little while before we had our first," Love said.

It's a trend that's grown significantly over the past two decades. According to the national center for health statistics, birthrates for women ages 40-44 doubled from 1990-2015.   Steinberg is the

"I think all fertility centers in general are seeing the average age of patients coming in and again these are patients with fertility problems, going up." Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, Medical Director of the Fertility Institutes, said. "But at the same time we're seeing the average age of women that are conceiving with assistance going up. And the world in general is waiting longer to have babies."

Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg says risks for pregnancy start to go up at age 35, specifically the risk of genetic disorders.  He says many people turn to fertility treatments to significantly lower that risk.

"Women are born with every egg they'll ever have so as those eggs stay with that woman and they're exposed to all the hazards of the environment and everything else that goes on, in addition to aging, that becomes hazardous as well, because some people say now is the time, and then they cant get pregnant," Steinberg said.

Love says she and her husband tried to conceive for two years before they sought out In Vitro Fertilization. As luck would have it, she ended up getting pregnant naturally with her second child.

"There's more opportunities, I think the man versus women power thing, I think that women are sort of really getting a grasp of that now and there are greater opportunities for them to strive in their career so they're putting motherhood on hold a bit," Love said.