Getting Pregnant May Be hard For Women Who Work Too Much

About 44 percent were overweight or obese and 22 percent were current or former smokers.

For this study, researchers followed 1,739 nurses who were explicitly trying to get pregnant, estimating that approximately 16 percent of them did not achieve this simple goal within a 12 month period. So, the next time one plans to have baby, work out the best possible option by taking advice of your gynecologist.

The study was conducted on women who participated in national survey in between 2010 and 2014 and who declared that they wanted to conceive. About 16 percent failed to become pregnant within a year, and it took more than two years for 5 percent of them.

Compared with women who worked 21-40 hours each week, those who worked more than 40 hours weekly took around 20% longer to get pregnant, according to the results. The study even found out that it extended conception time by about 50%.

The study showed that healthy couples can conceive within three to six months, though this duration varied depending on the couples’ age, lifestyle habits and medical conditions. This test will help them discover whether they are poised to have a successful pregnancy from the start, or whether their workload may alter their ability to conceive. The terms have been quite clearly established, respectively over 40 hours of work per week and regular lifting of 25 pounds or heavier loads several times per day.

Additionally, women who spent more time lifting or moving heavy objects took 50 percent longer to conceive than women not lifting or moving any objects. First it could be some working conditions make getting pregnant easier or harder, and it could mean that women who are not becoming pregnant are deliberately working extra shifts. This is very common in people who work late-night shifts, as was the case in this subset.

When researchers excluded women who had irregular menstrual cycles, which can independently impair fertility, they still found that heavy lifting was linked to a 33 percent longer timeline to conception.

Courtney Lynch from the Ohio State University in Columbus has a different theory.

“If this effect is real, it is likely due to the fact that these women are having less frequent intercourse due to their work demands”, Lynch, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. Health experts suggest that women in such professions could get fertility evaluation before trying to conceive to understand if work stress will delay or affect pregnancy.