Michelle Emblenton, biochemist at inviTRA, tells us how many eggs does a woman have over her life:
The ovaries have a certain number of eggs at birth, and this is usually around one to two million eggs. A woman is born with all of the eggs she will ever have throughout her life. When a woman reaches puberty the number of eggs will have been reduced to approximately four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand. With the onset of the menstrual cycle at puberty an egg is released every month in menstruation, but not one egg is developing at any one time. In reality, several eggs develop at once until one becomes the egg which ends up being ovulated, the rest of the eggs will then be lost in a process known as atresia. In this way, the number of oocytes is gradually depleted over the years until the woman reaches the age of menopause. As the number of eggs a woman had is constantly decreasing, when a woman gets to around the age of 35 we see that the ovarian reserve starts to get depleted more and more rapidly. From the age of about 40 onwards egg reserve is usually very low and, indeed, the quality of the eggs at this age tends to be lower as well due to accumulated genetic damage (which is normal and natural over the years). Although the main factor affecting your ovarian reserve is your age there are some women who have a lower ovarian reserve at a younger age. As a result, it is always useful to know what your ovarian reserve is at any age.
