Fertility begins to decline at a more rapid pace after the age of 37 or 38. Many women mistakenly think that they can defer childbearing until later in life and then successfully conceive with the help of artificial reproductive technology. In fact, age is the primary reason why infertility and pregnancy rates decline rapidly at this point even with artificial reproductive technology. Women who wish to defer pregnancy until after this age window or who wish to extend their fertility may have other options, though many of these are considered experimental at this time.

Two options are embryo cryopreservation and oocyte cryopreservation. Women who wish to defer pregnancy may, at a younger age, undergo ovarian stimulation, egg retrieval, and in-vitro fertilization with subsequent embryo freezing. Pregnancy success rates are 20 to 30 percent per transfer of two to three embryos. The drawback to this is that unless the woman already has a partner she wishes to conceive with at the time of in-vitro fertilization, the only other option is an anonymous sperm donor. Oocyte cryopreservation, in which a woman's ovaries are stimulated and her eggs are harvested and then frozen and preserved for future use, could theoretically overcome this obstacle, but pregnancy rates from this technology have been low to this point.