Pregnancy tips Midlife Moms Seek More Respect

Here's an article that gives a well rounded perspective of pregnancy over 40. They address both the positive and some of the challenging aspects that midlife or past midlife mothers face:

www.washingtontimes.com

From the article:

Among the famous women who had children long after their nubile years are Halle Berry (daughter at age 41), Mariah Carey (twins at age 41), Jane Seymour (twins at age 44), Marcia Cross (twins at age 44), Christie Brinkley (daughter at age 44), Susan Sarandon (son at age 45), Holly Hunter (twins at age 47) and Geena Davis (twins at age 48).

Other front-page births were Cheryl Tiegs’ twins at age 52 (via a surrogate), Joan Lunden’s two sets of twins (at ages 52 and 54, with a surrogate), and Elizabeth Edwards, who had unspecified fertility treatments to have a daughter at age 48 and a son at 50.

But hundreds of thousands of women have late-in-life childbirths that do not make the tabloids. In 2009, more than 105,000 babies were born to women ages 40 to 44, and almost 8,000 more were born to women ages 45 to 54. More than half of these children were first- or second-borns.

Many of these births, especially after age 45, involve egg donation, a scary subject for many women, said Marna Gatlin, who struggled with infertility for more than 15 years before having a child via egg donation.

When Ms. Gatlin and her husband went through the donation process 11 years ago, “it was so in the closet, it was deemed as something out of ‘Star Trek.’ Very science fiction.”