This is an article from the UK and this is a look at the 2009 figures for England and Wales and this is reported recently by the office of national statistics for England looking at the fact that the average age of women giving birth has increased and that there are much larger number of older women that are having younger babies obviously. So their children are younger and they’re starting later in life to begin having children. This is something that is unusual an especially for first time mothers.
So they’re looking at a lot of different statistics. The rates for younger women dropped so women under the age of 25 actually dropped during the period of 2008 and 2009 and they also dropped for some of the other younger age groups. However the average age increased for women over the age of 40 by almost 3 percent.
So there is a concern that of course if an older woman is having a child, there may be additional complications, there may be increased need for prenatal care- beyond normal prenatal care. And of course if you have prenatal care, you’re going to be getting those additional services but this is important information to keep in mind and I have a feeling- I haven’t seen statistics in the US on this but I wouldn’t be surprised to find these numbers are increasing in a lot of developed nations as more and more women are engaged in their careers as that change has taken place over the past decades.
That change has encouraged women to be more career focused earlier in life and more family focused as their careers have become established they then can fall back and look at developing their family relationships and that’s something that we should keep in mind and we should be aware of asking those kinds of questions.
We might think that some women are past child-bearing age but we’re seeing more and more frequently women later in life having babies and of course I’m a guy, I have little experience to talk about this but I urge you to get back with me and give me your response. I know we have quite a few labor and delivery and OB nurses out there.
Give me your impressions on what you think about this particular topic. Anecdotally even, have you seen that the age of your patients is increasing and are there any particular issues in nursing care that you have to adjust to deal with this particular change in our patient? So just interested to hear back from you, again nursingshowgmail.com or leave a comment on the website. I’d love to hear back, a response from some of you on this topic.
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This article has been featured in the news segment of the Nursing Show podcast episode Drowning, Near-Drowning Emergencies and Episode 136
