Put simply, a geriatric pregnancy is when a woman becomes pregnant over the age of 35. Again, the outdated term has since been replaced by "advanced maternal age."
This type of pregnancy is actually more common than you might think. "In the United States, increases in the number, percentage, and rate of births to older women have been observed over the past four decades," says Roxanne Pero, MD, FACOG, board-certified ob-gyn and member of the practitioner collective at perinatal nutrition brand, Needed. Nearly 19 percent of all pregnancies in the United States were in women age 35 years and older, according to data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. "There's also been a more recent trend of women waiting to have their first child until they're between the ages of 40 and 44," Dr. Pero says.