To be surprised at someone being pregnant at 44

I had my first at 35 and my fourth at 42! These days women usually build a career or try to have some financial security prior to starting a family, also they have to find a suitable male parent for their kids!
I’d say it’s not at all unusual these days. As long as mum and baby are both healthy, what exactly is your issue? Be happy for them!

Not surprising in the slightest, and clearly a wind up thread.

The ONS publishes live birth data by parental characteristics.
the most recent full data set published is 2022, in which there were just over 600,000 maternities. Of these, the modal age for having a baby was 30-34 (just over 200,000 live births), just over 121,000 babies were born to mothers 35-39 and just under 29,000 women aged 40-44 had babies. So not really rare, just less common. Around 2500 people over 45 had babies that year.

as with many things, it’s a statistical distribution around the average (in this case 30-34).

Someone's been at the 🍷

I think people are taking offence where I'm not sure any was intended. If I hadn't been on Mumsnet for so long, I'd have thought the same. It's all area dependent.

I see people saying "anything below 30 is young" - where I live it's more like below 20; I had DD at 19 and had raised eyebrows but that's more because I carried on with uni at the same time. Most of the FTMs I know are 25-ish; I don't know of anyone having their first after around 32.

Obviously in somewhere like London that would be different! But if you don't leave your hometown much / don't have much communication with people in different areas, you wouldn't really know that.

I feel like there is a weird moral panic about "older mums".

Women have always had kids in their 40s. If you go on Wikipedia and look at any woman in the past with a large amount of children then the last one is born in her 40s. Eleanor of Aquitaine had one at 42.

I had my first just after turning 46. No fertility treatment. Pregnancy and labour were fine. I must be a unicorn going by this thread.

Erm I had a single at 43 twins at 44 and thought I was finished at 34 with all the olders but got broody haha no problems and 3 of my friends two are 44 and expecting firsts and one is 45 and just had beautiful twin boys with no problems

Not shocking at all. Are you one of those people who think every woman goes through menopause in their 40s and puts everything down to it.

Yes at 44 I would be a bit surprised but not blown away by it. The oldest women I’ve met who’ve had babies either naturally or with ivf were 42.

Under 40 I wouldn’t really think twice about someone being pregnant. It’s so common. But yes the risks are higher for older parents and fertility is more likely to be an issue. Society has changed but our biology hasn’t.

If I was with the right person at 35 I wouldn’t wait to ttc as you never know how easy (or possible) it will be until you try.

Why does it matter so much to you !!

Just had my first at 42. My DH was looking forward to the months of vigorously trying only for me to get our bun in the oven on the first try.

To bring some clarity to this, the NHS maternity statistics show that there were 129,608 live births to women aged 35 and over in the year between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025. This is out of the 500k or so births in total…so, a very significant proportion.

Source: https://files.digital.nhs.uk/A2/93F997/hosp-epis-stat-mat-hesnational-2024-25.xlsx

So the only thing surprising is your surprise, OP.

I had my first at 36 and second at 40

Clearly then you are extremely hard of thinking and/or don't engage in real life.

What are you expecting from this thread?

Shudder…44 to start all that lark - sheesh !!
I’m 50 and currently road tripping on Jamaica with my DH
I leave at home my 27 year old daughter , married mother of 3
A 24 year old son about to move in with his girlfriend and their baby
Twin boys of 21 both well established in their trades and one about to go off travelling

Christ on a bike, if someone had said to me I had to have a baby at 44- not for a billion quid or a gun to the head !

She will be nearly my age when the kid starts school man !

No judgement here mind- maybe having a few quid/secure housing/ career sorted before hand is the way to go bit I just can’t get past running around after a 5 year old at 50 that isn’t your grandchild ( which I do lol, but it’s a different kettle of fish )

I agree with this. I live in London and a lot of my friends started trying for a baby in their late 30s. They took a long time to get pregnant and a lot had IVF. Not everyone had a baby even after years of trying. There is a reason the tube has adverts for fertility clinics in every train.

Most mums round me had their first after the age of 35. Very few younger than that.

I had my dc at 33, and that was late enough for me. Ideally I'd have had children in my 20s when I had more energy. We haven't had a second because we're just too tired. I really admire women that have the enegy to have them later, but I also think we've demonised young mothers and younger parenthood. We tell girls they'll never make something of themselves if they get pregnant, when really we should be supporting them to have children and still succeed.

With respect you don't know that.

Successful IVF at age 43 is pretty unlikely, transfer success rates at this age are around 9% per transfer

She's right though. Lots of people do happily and easily have babies 35+ but many don't and only find this out after they start trying.

Egg quality, ovarian reserve and sperm quality will all be unknowns and egg quality is in an unfairly steep decline past 35.

Lots of ladies on the Infertility pages are younger than 35, in incredible health and ovulate regularly but still find themselves there.

I got pregnant at 44, had been trying for 6 years after ds was born & nothing, separated from my husband & was pregnant with my new partner within 8 weeks as I had stopped using contraception due to thinking I was infertile, sadly I lost my little girl at 16 weeks.

Post-35 is almost the norm!

However, getting pregnant at 44 is somewhat unusual. Most can't, which is why the cut-off for IVF with own eggs is 43. But there is the occasional one at 44. It's not uheard-of.

The OP won't be back because:

1. they've shown themselves to be egregiously thick by not even bothering to Google age and births
2. this is a goady thread to have pop at older mothers.