What time is it on your Biological Clock? ⏰

Ever since Marisa Tomei banged her foot and told Joe Pesci about her ticking biological clock in My Cousin Vinny...many of us can't get that image or the state of our own biological clocks out of our heads!

It's true. Everyone’s body is unique, and that’s what makes women so diverse and wonderful. But that can also be frustrating, because it means there’s no set timeline every woman can rely on to plan her fertility future. We know that by the time a woman reaches her late thirties and early forties, her likelihood of pregnancy has decreased substantially. But by how much? And what does that mean for your specific body and fertility journey?

Whether you’re trying to plan for your future or trying for a baby now, there are several tests your doctor can do to help you discover what time it is on your personal biological clock. You’re born with all the eggs you’ll ever have, and lose a bunch every month in your natural menstrual cycle. What is left behind is called your "ovarian reserve".

There are many different ways that doctors can test your ovarian reserve. They may test your level of follicle stimulating hormone, or FSH, the hormone that helps signal to your ovaries to grow and release eggs. Doctors can test your levels of estradiol, a kind of estrogen. These test will let your doctor know how hard your body works each month in order to ovulate. The harder your body works, the less time you have left on your clock, so to speak.

Your doctor can also test for the anti-mulleran hormone (AMH), a kind of hormone that is given out by the egg-producing follicles in your ovaries. The more follicles and eggs you have, the higher your levels of AMH. This is a very effective test, since the levels of AMH directly correspond to how many follicles and eggs there are in your ovaries. Every woman should do a baseline AMH test (it is a simple cheap blood test) in her 20s, and then again in her 30s and 35 and then every year after, if she wants to keep a close eye on her fertility. Levels below 1 can indicate that she needs to focus on her fertility sooner rather than later. Levels above 4 can clue her into other conditions - such as PCOS.

Finally, your doctor can use a vaginal ultrasound to actually visualize how many antral follicles you have in your ovaries. Antral follicles are small follicles, about 2-8 millimeters in diameter, which contain eggs that can develop in the future. By counting how many antral follicles you have, your doctor can determine how many potential eggs you will have in future cycles. Women can have as many as 50+ follicles. As few as 1 or 2.

While the idea of the “biological clock” can be nerve wracking for a lot of women–we at Glow strongly feel that the more you know about your own body and fertility, the more empowered you’ll be to plan your fertility future. As they say, information IS power.