Patient handout: What you should know about your reproductive time span.

I_ve not yet reachedmenopauseVwhy should I worry about losing fertility? It_s important to understand how fertility declines with age. Menopause may mark the end of a woman_s natural ability to have children, but that doesn_t mean that a woman will be able to conceive right up until the time of menopause. The time of menopause for individual women can vary from age 40 through about age 60. For most women, loss of fertility begins to occur about 10 years before natural menopause and may begin soonerVas early as 32 years old. Fertility dips significantly by the time a woman reaches age 37 and declines even more rapidly after that.