To be surprised at someone being pregnant at 44

I was 43, 26 years ago, so not too unicornish.

Also wonder how many older mums end up using donor eggs

Wonder how many of those women had miscarriages before successful pregnancies at 44/45

ONS data - about 0.5 % of births at 44 and 0.4-0.5% for mothers who are 45+. Combined its 5,000-6,000 babies a year. Remember, its not just IVF kids - its not unheard of for women to have a third or fourth child rock up in their 40s as a surprise when they stopped thinking they needed to be so careful with contraception.

Actually, before PP posted that statistic (would be good to get the source), I would have guessed a lot less than 1% of babies being born to women age 44+. Because 1% would suggest thousands of babies are born to women mid-40s and up every year… Can that be right? 🧐

1% is LOW.

Also most of them will be via IVF.

Exactly. As has been said, on Mumsnet, every third woman has 2 or 3 babies in her 40s, and 44 is just an average age to have a baby.

In the real world, it's not.

Not even in 'London!' 😆

Post 35 is obviously not rare - 27% of babies are born to mothers over 35. However, 44 is more unusual but hardly unheard of - roughly 1% of babies are born to mothers who are 44 or above.

The women who had babies at 52 and 53 did not have natural conceptions. That would be IVF. They may have said it just happend naturally, but surely no-one is naive and clueless enough to believe it?!

Well, every time I was in the hospital to give birth to my babies, there were a handful of women in their early forties (40-42, I'd say).

44 seems much more unusual.

I know it is only 2 years difference to 42, but those 2 years probably make a huge difference in fertility and life planning.

Fair enough, it does cut both ways and it's horrible either way. I also hate people thinking that women are pretty much written off for having a child younger on life, too. I do see that somewhat as backlash.

Why do women feel so threatened by other women's choices as though it somehow undermines or threatens their own life choices? We're all on different paths.

Being a mother can be bloody hard whether you're 16 or 46!

I also think the doom and gloom responses are rooted in misogyny. Dressed up as “concern” and “advice”, when it’s just thinly veiled judgement towards women who dare to prioritise fun, career and personal accomplishments in their 20s and 30s. That’s why there’s far more ‘faux concern’ when it’s a woman having her FIRST baby at 40, not her 3rd or 4th. Indeed so much of the unsolicited and patronising advice comes from women who had their last child ‘late’. It seems it’s fine to have a baby in your 40s, just as long as you’ve already sacrificed your 20s and 30s to motherhood. 👍

Everyone will act like you're weird for thinking anything about it but 44 is surprisingly late to have a baby. Not because you shouldn't or because it's not usually possible (it usually is possible, if harder or riskier) but for me it's because if a woman hasn't had a baby by 44 I'd naively assume she had made the decision, or been forced by circumstance, not to have kids. So yeah, I'd be mildly surprised if a 44 year old told me she was pregnant, too.

had my first at 18. Recurrent miscarriages in my late 20s and early 30s, had my daughter at 40. I think 44 is on the later side but to suggest that 35 is too old is ridiculous.

Interesting as the Office for National Statistics which is s government dept, says differently - bizarre!

Naomi Campbell was via surrogate though. I'm not sure about the others. I think super rich women have a lot more resources (unlimited money to spend on IVF, able to chose IVF treatment from around the world (different jurisdictions have different laws on how many eggs can be implanted), access to surrogacy) and privacy so you don't know all the details. I don't think their experiences map well onto "normal" women's always.

I do know two people who had children at 44 and 45 but I know it is unusual. However I know loads who had them around 39/40. I was 36 with my second. Over 35 is not unusual where I am. WRT the grandparent thing, I have mixed feelings. DDs and my niece have v little interest in my mother. They love MIL but she's 1.5 hrs away. DD1 and my Dad were exceptionally close (and he was almost 80 when she was born). I only had one GP but I don't think it would have bothered me if I didn't (lived far away).

I am 67, my mother had me at 42 and then miscarried after me... she thought she had started to go through the menopause. So no, it is not unusual, nor is it a recent state of affairs.

Naomi Campbell confirmed she used a surrogate. Janet Jackson carried the baby but not her egg used

I did not say that fertility falls off a cliff after 35 but it does decline.

It is so odd to me that people think that just because they, or someone they know, had a baby after 40 that it is not rare. Current statistics tells us that 4% of UK babies are born to women over 40 and only 1 in 10 of those are natural conceptions. This has increased recently and is now higher than the percentage of babies born to teenagers (which is good!) but it is still a small fraction.

How old are you OP? Are you still working or retired? Just wondering if you only mix with a small circle of people. I currently know 5 people who are over 35 and pregnant - a mix of work colleagues of mine and my husband, nursery staff, friends etc. Really quite common nowadays. When I was pregnant, our antenatal course was mostly older parents, only one couple in their twenties.

I think Naomi Campbell and Janet Jackson were like 50 ish? And Cherie Blair had a baby at 45 or 46 I think. My friend was 43.

Sure, but again you are not seeing all the people who tried and didn’t manage to have babies at 40 and beyond. Because babies that don’t exist aren’t visible and can’t be counted and noticed and thought of as ‘the norm’ or otherwise. We notice what we see; we notice the success stories.

When I was trying to have a baby I blithely assumed that being fit and healthy in my mid 30s and having and no PCOS and no endometriosis and no immune issues and a super fecund family with dozens of cousins meant I’d have no trouble conceiving.

I’d also accidentally fallen pregnant in my 20s while on the pill, so it wasn’t an issue with fertility from the getgo.

Starting at 33 it took me 2 years to get a positive pregnancy test (which ended in stillbirth) and multiple miscarriages after that. I finally had a child at 40, conceived without assistance, but prior to that I’d had 2 failed rounds of IVF where my eggs were discovered to be such poor quality that only one out of 10 fertilised, producing a sad little slow-growing misshapen blastocyst that never implanted.

We had extensive genetic testing, testing of sperm and reproductive tract issues and uterine lining and everything - and the only problem was egg quality. And that is the part of the process that is most affected by age.

I was unlucky my eggs had quite such a short expiry date, and not everyone’s do - but there is this weird attitude on MN that age shouldn’t affect women’s bodies because feminism.

And if you suggest fertility declines as you get older you’re some weird tradwife having a pop at older mothers.

And I am an older mother, so I’m certainly not judging! But it took me the better part of a decade of relentless intrusive investigations to get there - so it feels a bit shitty when people dismiss the infertility struggles of older women as scaremongering and essentially say, don’t be daft, everyone has babies in their 40s, it’s easy, this isn’t the dark ages!

I read your previous post and never thought of it before but it seems to be true. The body is constantly trying to trick us into getting pregnant such as during ovulation when women’s libido increases, so it makes sense that it also tries to have one last hurrah before menopause too. A good half of the women who had gotten pregnant in their forties said it was unintentional too.

The odds are you’ll be fine. There are lots of doom and gloom responses to your post with people telling you to brace yourself for problems but often this is because they encountered issues conceiving, which is/was obviously awful for them but has sweet FA to do with you. You may have trouble conceiving or you may, like millions of women in their mid to late thirties, have no difficultly at all. I was told my fertility had fallen of a cliff when I had DD after one attempt aged 35. Then I was told it would likely take ages to have another because I had an emergency c-section and post pregnancy complications. Fell pregnant with DS on the first attempt.

Infertility can happen to any woman but it doesn’t happen to most women - which is why it can be an incredibly lonely journey for women who are affected by it