3.2 Cohort of women in the fertile reproductive life stage at the SCI event
Overall, 264 women were in the fertile life stage when they were affected by an SCI. Of those, 124 women (47%) had children at a mean age of first delivery of 29 years (SD=6). In detail, mean age at first delivery was 26 years (SD=5) in women who had children before the SCI event, 26 years (SD=7) in women who had children before and after the SCI event, and 31 years (SD=5) in women who delivered their first child after the SCI event. Women who delivered their first child after the SCI event had more years of education compared to women with deliveries before the SCI those with deliveries before and after the SCI event. Of the entire cohort (n=264), almost three-quarters (74%) were classified as paraplegia, and 60% had incomplete lesions. Most women were born in Switzerland, long educated, and had a traumatic SCI (Table 2).
Table 3 presents the results of the univariate (unadjusted model) and multivariable (adjusted model) logistic analyses. The likelihood of being a mother was significantly associated with SCI aetiology and age at injury. More specifically, the chance of motherhood was significantly decreased by 61% in women with non-traumatic injury (OR 0.39; 95% CI 0.16–0.84). Similarly, higher age at injury was associated with a significantly lower chance of motherhood (OR 0.94; 95% CI 0.91–0.97).
Figure 2 (A) shows the number of women by the age at SCI and the age at first delivery after the SCI event. Overall, 72 women delivered children after the SCI event. The time between the SCI event and first delivery after the SCI event ranged from 0 to 5 years in 34 women (47%), from 6 to 10 years in 12 (17%), from 11 to 15 years in 16 (22%), from 16 to 20 years in seven (10%), and 20+ years in three (4%). Forty-two women with SCI before the age of 30 delivered their first child after age 30. Of those, 15 women had a second child after the age of 36 (Figure 2, (B)).