Pregnancy After Menopause: Is It Possible With IVF?
Women's HealthMenopause

Can You Get Pregnant After Menopause?

Can You Get Pregnant After Menopause?
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Updated on March 3, 2026
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Some things get harder with age: hangovers, standing up from the floor, and getting pregnant. Over time, female fertility declines and ends with menopause, when your menstrual period stops. While you can’t get pregnant naturally during this time (your body no longer releases eggs), you can via in vitro fertilization (IVF), although with some risk. Here’s everything to know about postmenopause pregnancy.

Can You Get Pregnant Naturally After Menopause?

Menopause typically happens between age 45 and 55. But for a small percentage of women, it can happen before 45 and, for an even smaller group, before 40, says Mache Seibel, MD, a menopause expert and member of the medical advisory committee for the National Menopause Foundation.

Some women enter medical menopause earlier if they’ve had their ovaries removed as a method of cancer prevention, Dr. Seibel adds.

You’ve officially reached menopause when you haven’t had a period for 12 months — at that point, you have a 0 percent chance of getting pregnant naturally. But your fertility declines for years leading up to menopause and in fact even earlier.

Women are born with all the eggs they’ll ever have, but that reserve declines over time, says Seibel. With age, fewer healthy eggs survive in the ovaries. The overall health of those eggs declines, too, making it harder to get pregnant naturally during perimenopause, says Monica Christmas, MD, a board member of the Menopause Society, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and the director of the menopause program at UChicago Medicine. Eventually, ovulation slows and stops completely.

Peak fertility typically occurs between the late teens and late twenties. By age 30, your chances of getting pregnant start to decline, and that drop speeds up in your mid-thirties. By age 45, it’s a lot harder to conceive naturally, though still possible until you reach menopause. (Only 1 in 10 women in their forties or older gets pregnant in any given menstrual cycle.)

If you don’t want to get pregnant, you should continue using some form of birth control for 12 full months after your last period. This timing can get confusing because there’s not always a clear end to menstruation. “Most people will experience changes to their menstrual cycle that could last for just a few months beforehand to a couple of years beforehand,” Dr. Christmas says.

The menopausal transition isn’t linear: Fertility may be trending downward, Seibel says, but women may still have one or two healthy eggs. Occasionally, women think they’re no longer fertile and are surprised to discover they’ve gotten pregnant, he adds.

IVF and Other Options for Pregnancy After Menopause

Even if you can’t get pregnant naturally after menopause, you may still be a candidate for IVF. During in vitro fertilization, a fertilized egg is implanted into the uterus.

If you froze eggs or embryos when you were younger, you can do IVF using your own eggs. If not, you’ll need to use donor eggs, because you won’t have enough or they won’t be healthy enough, Christmas says.

IVF involves combining an egg and sperm in a lab. Eggs are usually retrieved during a minor surgery after a woman has taken fertility medication that stimulates her ovaries to produce several additional eggs.

The egg is inseminated with sperm, and once the fertilized egg divides, it becomes an embryo. Healthy embryos can then be transferred to a woman’s uterus through a thin tube inserted in the vagina.

Even if you opted to use donated eggs for postmenopausal IVF, you’d be given hormonal treatments to mimic the hormone surge that would normally happen to prepare the uterine lining for pregnancy, Seibel says.

IVF isn’t always successful: Research shows that it may result in fewer pregnancies and live births in women older than 35.

 In fact, assisted reproduction technologies result in live births just 28 percent of the time in people older than 40.

Despite these rates, it’s possible to get pregnant using IVF after menopause. There are even several case studies documenting successful IVF postmenopausal pregnancies in women in their sixties (achieved, however, with egg donation, not biologically).

IVF is currently the only assisted reproductive technology available that can facilitate pregnancy after menopause. Other parenting options after menopause include adoption and working with a surrogate.

Risks of Pregnancy After Menopause

People are getting pregnant later in life now. Births by women in their late thirties increased by more than 67 percent from 1990 to 2019. Births by women age 40 to 44 also increased by more than 132 percent during this time.

This is due to several reasons, including education, career goals, and financial concerns, Christmas says. But with the increased popularity of egg freezing (and the number of employers now covering it as a work benefit), she thinks we’ll continue to see more pregnancies in older adults.

That said, there are health risks for older mothers, and in what might seem like an unfair categorization, mothers are considered older as soon as they turn 35, Christmas says. She says that with age, chances are higher for these pregnancy complications:

“The efficiency of the system is breaking down,” Seibel says. “The eggs are not as vital or vibrant, the uterine lining isn’t as perfectly ready, and so there are more miscarriages and losses.”

With age, you’re also more likely to be living with other health conditions that can make pregnancy more challenging, including diabetes and high blood pressure.

Seibel suggests talking with your primary care doctor and ob-gyn about your overall health before embarking on your journey to try to have a baby after menopause. They might suggest you undergo certain screening tests first to make sure you won’t be risking your health or the health of the fetus, he says.

The Takeaway

  • You can’t get pregnant naturally after menopause, which is defined as 12 months since your last period occurring between the ages of 45 and 55.
  • Fertility declines throughout your thirties and forties, making pregnancy difficult before perimenopause, the period of time leading up to menopause.
  • You can get pregnant using IVF after menopause, either with frozen eggs or embryos or donor eggs, but your risk of complications increases with age.
  • Talk to your doctor about whether IVF after menopause would be safe for you to try.
EDITORIAL SOURCES
Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy. We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions.
Resources
  1. Menopause. MedlinePlus. July 12, 2023.
  2. Having a Baby After Age 35: How Aging Affects Fertility and Pregnancy. American College of Obstetricians and & Gynecologists. February 2023.
  3. What Is Menopause? National Institute on Aging. October 16, 2024.
  4. In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). MedlinePlus. March 31, 2024.
  5. Bentov Y et al. IVF and Pregnancy Outcomes: the Triumphs, Challenges, and Unanswered Questions. Journal of Ovarian Research. October 17, 2025.
  6. National ART Summary. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). December 10, 2024.
  7. Verma S et al. Pregnancy at 65, Risks and Complications. Journal of Human Reproductive Sciences. April-June 2016.
  8. Morse A. Stable Fertility Rates 1990-2019 Mask Distinct Variations by Age. United States Census Bureau. April 6, 2022.
  9. High-Risk Pregnancy. Cleveland Clinic. July 12, 2024.
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Kara Smythe, MD

Medical Reviewer

Kara Smythe, MD, has been working in sexual and reproductive health for over 10 years. Dr. Smythe is a board-certified fellow of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and her interests include improving maternal health, ensuring access to contraception, and promoting sexual health.

She graduated magna cum laude from Florida International University with a bachelor's degree in biology and earned her medical degree from St. George’s University in Grenada. She completed her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. She worked in Maine for six years, where she had the privilege of caring for an underserved population.

Smythe is also passionate about the ways that public health policies shape individual health outcomes. She has a master’s degree in population health from University College London and recently completed a social science research methods master's degree at Cardiff University. She is currently working on her PhD in medical sociology. Her research examines people's experiences of accessing, using, and discontinuing long-acting reversible contraception.

When she’s not working, Smythe enjoys dancing, photography, and spending time with her family and her cat, Finnegan.

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Sarah Klein is a Boston-based health journalist with more than 15 years experience in lifestyle media. She has held staff positions at Livestrong, Health, Prevention, and Huffington Post. She is a graduate of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, and a National Academy of Sports Medicine–certified personal trainer. She moderated a panel on accessibility in fitness at SXSW in 2022, completed the National Press Foundation’s 2020 Vaccine Boot Camp, and attended Mayo Clinic’s Journalist Residency in 2019.

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