When evaluating your overall fertility, the quality of your eggs is as important, if not more important, than the quantity of eggs (known as your ovarian reserve) you possess. Your egg quality naturally declines as you age, but this decline can be hastened by stress, poor diet, hormonal imbalances and/other reproductive health issues. Poor egg quality results in decreased fertility in a number of ways: sperm have difficulty penetrating the egg for fertilization, implantation is less likely to be successful, and the chance of miscarriage increases due to genetic abnormalities.