--- title: Women Are Having Fewer Triplets description: Advances in fertility procedures are likely leading a drop in women having multiple babies at once canonical: https://time.com/4309224/the-number-of-triplets-born-in-the-u-s-drops-by-40/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-04-28T04:01:33.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:43.541Z article:section: Health og:title: Women Are Having Fewer Triplets og:description: Advances in fertility procedures are likely leading a drop in women having multiple babies at once og:url: https://time.com/4309224/the-number-of-triplets-born-in-the-u-s-drops-by-40/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Women Are Having Fewer Triplets twitter:description: Advances in fertility procedures are likely leading a drop in women having multiple babies at once twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # The Number of Triplets Born in the U.S. Drops by 40% > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=e4e74c1f-7766-4822-a3ce-37548cf70bbb&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Truth About Egg Freezing [Watch (HLS stream): The Truth About Egg Freezing](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/A1nDxOli.m3u8) (8:41)  _Published 2015-07-16. Vicki Rokhlin, 28, is relying on her 14 frozen eggs to have children. But will they work?_ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Apr 28, 2016 4:01 AM UTC by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Apr 28, 2016 4:01 AM UTC Women are having fewer triplets than in the past, according to a new federal study looking at the rate of multiple births over time. Experts have been concerned over spikes in women having triplets—thought to be due to women [getting pregnant later](http://time.com/95315/women-keep-having-kids-later-and-later/) and the use of [fertility](http://time.com/70143/report-card-fertility/) enhancement technologies. Having triplets or what experts call “higher-order births” (more than three babies) can take a toll on the woman having them, which is why, when the rate increased four-fold beginning in the 1980s, doctors were concerned. Since 1998, that number has gone down, and a new report from the National Center for Health Statistics released Thursday shows it dropped 41% from 1998 to 2014\. “Triplet and higher-order multiple births continue to be at higher risk of poor outcome,” the study authors write, adding that triplets are less likely to survive their first year compared to single babies. “And those who did survive were more likely to suffer longterm morbidities.” So what’s changed? The trend of women becoming mothers later has remained consistent throughout the study period. What’s different, the study authors note, are improvements in assisted reproductive technologies (ART) to help women conceive. “There’s been a gradual shift in practices, especially in In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) centers, where there’s an emphasis on high pregnancy rates with fewer embryos and lower multiple births,” says Dr. Bradley Van Voorhis, the president of the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART). “There’s a substantial reduction in the number of embryos transferred due to advances in embryo selection and transfer.” Van Voorhis was not involved in the study. The drop was not steady across all demographics. For non-Hispanic white women, high-order births are down 46% compared to 15% among Hispanic women. The rate appears to be unchanged for non-Hispanic black women. One possible reason is that women in those demographics are less like to have IVF procedures. “This is a relatively new field and rapid advances have been made,” says Van Voorhis. ## Transcript I liken it to the feeling when my friends get engaged and they're so excited that they just solved this huge mystery in their life, and I'm happy for them. But, when I went through it and when I froze my eggs, I realized that I I've done this for myself. There was no man swooping in to fill in this puzzle piece. That was really empowering to know that I took fate into my own hands, and have changed the path of my life, because I wanted to, and I could. [ MUSIC ] I have a lot of these dreams that I wanna live out on my timeline. A lot of those dreams include long spans of international travel. I wanna write a novel. At one point, I'd love to be a TED talker. And so I was at my gynecologist office and she was so supportive when I was telling her about my dreams. And I was having a lot of anxiety How I was going to fulfill all these dreams before 32, 33, 34. And so we started talking about egg freezing. I kind of brought it up to her as a joke. And she said, you know, you should really think about this. And so she referred me to a doctor. We've seen a transformation in the type of patient who comes in for elective egg freezing. Six or seven years ago, it was often a woman who was experiencing concerns over her reproductive potential, Many of them already had diminished ovarian reserve. We could fast forward that today, where the woman are coming in. They're 35 years old, very frequently. The buzz is in the air at the company that Women her age, in her situation, are taking charge of their fertility, are coming in and freezing their eggs. So the culture has changed dramatically. [ MUSIC ] So I'll show you what we're basically trying to do is replace the water in the cell with a sugar- based cryoprotectant solution so that there are no ice crystals. Ice crystals cause damage to cell membranes [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Okay. Now I'm going to load the eggs onto the cryo device. All right, and then they get plunged into the liquid nitrogen. So this is the liquid nitrogen tank. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] This one here [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ INAUDIBLE ] That's it. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] We've been fortunate enough to have dozens of women achieve a healthy pregnancy after using their thawed eggs. Recent reports in the literature suggests that over 10, 000 healthy babies have now been born from egg freezing technology. But some of those numbers that you just mentioned. Those are often just any births from a frozen egg. They don't necessarily distinguish between whether the egg was frozen by a donor or by a mother herself. Do you have any data about The number of babies that have been born from the mother's own frozen egg here at this clinic. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] So reports suggest that we've had over 10, 000 babies nationally and internationally from frozen eggs. But I know a lot of those babies aren't necessarily from women who have electively frozen their eggs for social reasons, many of them are from donor eggs. There is a difference from taking a 22 year old frozen egg and taking a 35 or 40 year old woman's egg. and someday thawing and fertilizing and transferring. So we have to be really careful about how we council patients. I know that many of the patients who freeze their eggs here are going to be able to someday have a healthy baby, but it won't be everybody. That's why it's not an insurance policy. It's just an opportunity to take some control over something we've really never had control of before. The truth about egg freezing is it's a relatively new procedure. It was just declassified as being experimental about a little over a year ago. So for that reason, there is not this large, comprehensive data pool of the number of eggs frozen, and then thawed, that have become babies. The vast majority of eggs that have been frozen have not been retrieved yet. So women have to understand that there are no numbers for them to call from when they are looking for will this work me. Because I'm 28 and my fertility is the best that it will ever get, I was able to do everything in one round. And I didn't understand the power of that until I woke up in the hospital right after surgery next to a 34 year old woman and she told me this was her third time trying this year, that's putting your body through three rounds of hormone injections, three surgeries And it's three times as expensive. And so the moment that really validated it for me was when this 34 year- old woman who had done 3 rounds in a year turned to me and said, wow. I wish someone had told me to do this at 28 cuz I would have. Some physicians and some marketing fertility arms do push women to freeze their eggs when they're at a very young age. Other clinics prefer that women wait until age 30 because what they've found is that the younger you are when you freeze, the less likely you are to need the eggs later on. However, as with most things in life, this is a double- edged sword. The younger you are, the better the quality of your eggs is going to be. Decreasing fertility starts during the time a woman is in her late puberty and goes throughout her life. Even when a woman is still getting her period in her late forties or even early fifties, it doesn't mean she's making normal eggs and that they're gonna be able to end up with healthy babies from that. It's not the success rate. It's the success rate for women like you. Are you 29? Are you 39? Are you 33? How are your tubes? Or do you have endometriosis? What's your hormonal health like? What's your body mass index? There are a huge number of varietal. That will determine conception success, whether it's natural or medically enhanced. Before I did all the research, I thought egg freezing was easy. And then I started reading blogs. And I started to get a sense of like whoa, your body goes through a lot. You're essentially forcing yourself to go into pregnancy mode in two weeks instead of nine months. I mean my estrogen shot up from 61 to 1900, I felt crazy. And I wasn't really prepared for that. Most of the women that have reached out to me The overall theme is, thank you for bringing awareness to the gravity of how much you put your body through, how much time this takes, how different your life is. Women shouldn't take this lightly, it's a big financial consideration, it's a big health consideration. It's a month of your life that you're sitting at home, you're not dating, you're not drinking, you're not smoking, you're not partying, you're not traveling. That was really hard for me Me. I mean I was up every morning at 7 AM to get an ultrasound, and a blood test. [ MUSIC ] I think there's no guarantee in life, right? No guarantee that I could have a child naturally, and there's no guarantee that one of these implanted embryos will stick. So, all that I can do is Is give my kids the best shot of a healthy future as possible. [ MUSIC ] Egg freezing is an amazing Oppurtunity but it is not. Absoutely not. An ironclad insurance policy. Know that going in. Hedging your bets is always a good idea in life. And you've got about $ 17000 in your back pocket that you're not gonna notice if it goes away Consider egg freezing. It's really going to work for a lot of women, but it's not going to work for everyone. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4309224/the-number-of-triplets-born-in-the-u-s-drops-by-40/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4309224/the-number-of-triplets-born-in-the-u-s-drops-by-40/"},"headline":"The Number of Triplets Born in the U.S. Drops by 40%","datePublished":"2016-04-28T04:01:33.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:55:43.541Z","description":"Advances in fertility procedures are likely leading a drop in women having multiple babies at once","url":"https://time.com/4309224/the-number-of-triplets-born-in-the-u-s-drops-by-40/","keywords":["fertility","women","Babies","IVF"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alexandra Sifferlin","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/fertility/","name":"fertility"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4309224/the-number-of-triplets-born-in-the-u-s-drops-by-40/","name":"The Number of Triplets Born in the U.S. Drops by 40%"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The Truth About Egg Freezing","description":"Vicki Rokhlin, 28, is relying on her 14 frozen eggs to have children. 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