Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

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A new DNA test given to women as young as 18 can predict how long you have left to start a family.  At 36, I would totally have this fertility test done and know exactly how long my eggs were fertilizable.  Then I wouldn't have to hear my mother scare me with infertility stories.  God, I love science.

The breakthrough follows the discovery of a gene called Fragile X that indicates the rate at which a woman's egg supply will diminish over the years.

Professor Norbert Gleicher, of the Centre for Human Reproduction in New York, said: 'We can take an 18 or 20-year-old girl and check her Fragile X and make a pretty good prediction of whether she's at risk.'

Women are born with a limited supply of immature eggs, or follicles, in their ovaries. Only a tiny fraction turn into mature eggs.  The size of a woman's 'ovarian reserve' falls throughout her life. A newborn girl has between one million and two million follicles, by adolescence, she will have just 400,000 and by her 40s there will be just a few hundred left.

Fertility doctors say that the number of follicles left in the ovaries is a good clue to how many more years a woman will be fertile.  I wonder how many follicles I have left ;)