Why Getting Pregnant After 40 Isn't Such a Crazy Idea

When I was in my 20s, I thought 35 was already very old. It was my firm intention to be well in the family way long before I reached that age. But life turned out differently. A long relationship ended; another partner died. Life doesn’t always go as planned, I learned. So, I found myself still single at the age of 35, and my now rather strong desire to have children still remained unfulfilled. Then my current husband appeared. I’d known him already for years, but once the spark ignited, there was no stopping us. By the time I turned 36, I was living in a partnership and the mother of twins. I didn’t consider myself old at the time, although I do owe it to my age that I had twins (between the ages of 35 and 39, you’re three times more likely to give birth to twins).

I only really started to consider my age when I discovered after the birth of our twins that I still wanted a third child. Somewhere, I had the niggling thought that this would have to occur before I turned forty. But who in fact determines that? Society or I? Although the desire for a third child was there, I also felt that the time was not yet ripe. The early years with the twins had been extremely hectic, and I first wanted to write a book about twins and enjoy the relative peace. Couldn’t I simply adapt this age norm to my own needs? I decided that I could. My husband and I got married, and we even extended our house by an extra floor. Meanwhile, that ominous biological clock was ticking, but I remained firm. If it was meant to be, I decided, we would have that third child. Because the few intervening years of rest would be exactly the difference between us not being emotionally ready for it and being able to offer something of real value to our third child. The difference between chaos and harmony. Between being exhausted and being fit again. I felt that these were all important considerations that outweighed the state of my ovaries.

In the meantime, I found out that there are still quite a few taboos and half-truths about getting pregnant later in life. In some countries, any pregnancy after the age of 30 is already called “geriatric”, which if you ask me is age discrimination pure and simple. In the Netherlands, fortunately, we are a little more open-minded, but when I finally spontaneously became pregnant with our third child at the age of 42, people frequently asked me “if it was planned”. Too bad, those prejudices, because even our grandmothers often didn’t have their last child until around the age of forty. Yes, of course, you have to remain realistic when it comes to getting pregnant later in life. The chances of spontaneous success diminish over time: per month it’s only 5% at the age of 38 (compared to 20% when you are 20) and conversely, the chance of a miscarriage increases (1 in 3 if you are between 40 and 45 of age; prior to the age of 35, it’s still 1 in 10), as well as the chance of conceiving a child with Down syndrome. A third of all women over 35 experience fertility problems. The biggest risk about late pregnancies is that you will fail to conceive.

But otherwise, the risks are not that much higher than with a pregnancy at a young age. And let’s not forget the positive side of the coin: our age expectancy is getting higher and higher and with it the chance that even as an older mother, you will be able to enjoy your children for a long time to come. In addition, older mothers seem to be able to offer their children much more stability, according to research. I am convinced that nature has simply made a mistake when it comes to the fertile “shelf life” of women. Or at least that our bodies are lagging behind the changed facts “on the ground”. The average life expectancy in Roman times was probably around 27 years. In 1900, it was still only 45 years old. It makes sense that people would start having children around the age of twenty. However, in the meantime, we have reached an average life expectancy for women in the Netherlands of around 83 years – it will probably not be long before that number increases to around 90. The whole idea that you have to get pregnant “in time” doesn’t really fit in with that.

However, it remains a sensitive issue for women. “You will probably be dead before your children are out of school,” I was told, when a video of me and my sisters (who were pregnant at the same time as I and who were also past forty) went viral on Instagram. That’s simply not true: the chance that we will still be alive is exponentially greater. Of course, there are risks to becoming a mother later in life. But life is never free of risks, even when you’re young. And besides, it is not always a conscious choice. Sometimes life simply plays out the way it does. 

I myself have not experienced any disadvantages of being a mother later in life – well, maybe one: we cannot ask our parents so readily to babysit because they are already old. But otherwise, none. Although I’d have wanted to be a mother sooner if life had gone differently, I’m glad I didn’t let that biological clock rush me. And I really enjoy our precious last present, precisely because I now have peace and calm to enjoy our baby.