I overheard someone say recently, “We should normalize pregnancy over 40.”

And I haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Because my first thought was: But should we?

Does “normalizing” pregnancy over 40 risk making women think there aren’t very real biological challenges that come with waiting?

Because there are.

Fertility declines with age, and if you haven’t frozen your eggs in your 20s or early 30s, you may be looking at a much more challenging road once you get into your 40s. I don’t think we do women any favors by pretending otherwise.

My own story is actually a pretty good example of why this conversation is so complicated.

I had my first baby naturally at 34. After that, I built a business, and for years I simply didn’t have the bandwidth to add another baby to our family. By the time I turned 40, I had sold that business and deeply regretted not having another child, but I genuinely thought I was too late.

So I did nothing.

It wasn’t until I was 44 that I learned about all the different possibilities available to women who want to pursue motherhood later and realized there might still be a path forward for me.

And there was. It just didn’t look the way I once imagined it would.

With the help of reproductive technology, I became pregnant and had our second child at 45.

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I wish I had known that sooner. I wish I had known it at 40, or even in my late 30s. Not because knowing would have guaranteed me another baby, but because I would have understood that I still had options worth exploring.

And that’s why I actually do think we should normalize pregnancy over 40.

Not because it’s easy, and not because it’s the right choice or lifestyle for everyone. Definitely not because fertility doesn’t change with age.

But because every woman deserves to know what their options are (and what they aren’t) if they find themselves contemplating motherhood in their 40s.

There’s a big difference between telling women, “Don’t worry, you have plenty of time,” and telling them, “Your path may be harder or look different, but let’s talk about what might still be possible.”

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if you’re over 40 and still have a baby on your heart, it may not be too late for you.

Your path may not look the way you once imagined. Mine certainly didn’t.

But, different doesn’t mean impossible.

And I think women deserve the chance to make these decisions with real information instead of quietly assuming the decision has already been made for them by their age.

Maybe normalizing pregnancy over 40 isn’t about encouraging women to wait.

Maybe it’s about creating more conversations. Sharing more information. Closing the fertility information gap. And making sure women understand what choices may still be available to them, so they can decide for themselves what they want to do with that information.

This Substack is for women doing motherhood later. Subscribe if that’s you. 🩵

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We had our first child when I was 34 and my husband was 40. We’d always thought of having another one, but I honestly didn’t have the bandwidth while I built a business. I ended up selling that business at 40, and once the dust settled, I realized that I regretted not having another baby. But since I was already 40, I felt like it was probably too late.

Then, right after I turned 44, I was in my kitchen, glancing at my phone for the hundredth time, when I saw an article that explored all the different ways reproductive technology was helping women over 40 and even 50 start and grow their families.

It was then that I realized it might not be too late for us. Maybe we still had a chance to complete our family.

But there was another side to consider. Our son had just turned 11, and life had gotten easier and easier as he grew. We were looking at an early retirement for my husband, and things seemed manageable. I had gone back to work part-time as an interior designer. We enjoyed two vacations a year as a family, and they were fun and stress-free.

Having another baby would mean starting over from scratch, starting over at “the hard part.”

And that right there made me think twice, especially when I saw my friends and family members my same age getting more sleep, more travel time, more free time, lots of quiet, and space to pursue their hobbies.

Was I really ready to choose a toddler at 45 years old? Preschool drop-offs? Losing lots of sleep during perimenopause? Starting over with a newborn when we already had an 11-year-old?

Was I ready to ask my body at this age and stage of life to use its limited reserves to grow another human being? I could be gaining a ton of weight during pregnancy and then having to take it all back off while also in perimenopause?!

But we had a question to ask ourselves: Do we choose the “easier life,” or the harder path?

When I asked my husband that question, his answer was an immediate “yes” to another baby. I wasn’t so sure yet.

But since our family didn’t feel complete and we had a glimmer of hope, we decided to explore all of our fertility options and saw a doctor.

And when that doctor laid out a plan for us to grow our family, I decided to say yes too.

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I realized I’d rather lose 50 pounds after being pregnant than never meet my next child.

Being 64 at her graduation felt like a much easier thing to accept than spending my later decades wondering, what if?

And if having another child meant changing the timeline we’d pictured for ourselves, we could always postpone an early retirement in favor of having a house that felt complete.

I was ready to choose waking up exhausted rather than waking up wondering who was missing from our family.

I’d rather juggle a toddler and a teen than have more freedom.

Sure, I might be the oldest mom at the preschool, but I was willing to do that in order to experience motherhood one more time.

All of those tradeoffs felt worth it. I could accept the judgment, the gray hair, the recovery time, and all the sacrifices attached to this decision because this was a life I was choosing intentionally.

No, I’m not saying that I’m willing to have babies perpetually, so one day I will literally have an empty nest, LOL.

But this was never really about the empty nest. It was about choosing fullness over ease.

It was about deciding what really mattered to our family and choosing that over comfort.

Having another baby became the proof of a philosophy we didn’t even know we held until we had to make the choice ourselves.

People may see having another baby at 45 as sacrificing the easier, “better” life I’d already earned.

I see it as trading that life for a much fuller one.

When I was 44, my husband and I decided we wanted one more baby, and at 45, after fertility treatments, we finally welcomed our daughter.

It definitely wasn’t the timeline I pictured for myself when we got married 15 years earlier. Back then, we had actually decided we weren’t going to have children at all. (I’ll write about that journey in my next Substack.)

Since then, I’ve realized almost every woman in my Instagram DMs who’s had a baby in her forties has a story.

People assume we waited because we prioritized ourselves over starting a family. But that’s usually not what happened at all.

Life happened.

And, lot of us are exhausted trying to explain that.

If you want my full story, I wrote all about why I waited until 45 to have our second child here.

But, these are the reasons I hear over and over.

1. Education and career

A lot of us were told to get the degree, build the career, become financially independent, buy the house, and get established first. Then one day everyone starts acting like we waited too long. It’s a strange message to grow up with.

2. Infertility

Wanting a baby and being able to have one are two completely different things. Years can disappear into appointments, treatments, losses, waiting, and hoping. From the outside it can look like someone waited, when really they were trying the whole time.

3. Financial setbacks, debt, or bankruptcy

Sometimes life falls apart financially. You want to bring a baby into a stable situation, and it takes years to get back there. There is nothing selfish about wanting your child to have security.

4. Changing your mind

Some women truly didn’t want children. Until they did. People grow, priorities change, and the woman you are at 42 doesn’t have to want the same things the woman you were at 26 wanted.

5. A partner who wasn’t ready

Sometimes you were ready long before your partner was. You waited because you loved them and hoped they’d get there too. You respected that they didn’t feel ready yet. So, the years passed and you got older.

6. Divorce, losing a spouse, or meeting the right person later

Sometimes your marriage ended or you lost someone you loved. Maybe the right relationship didn’t happen until later. Life doesn’t always follow the schedule we planned.

7. Raising a child with special needs

Sometimes you had a child early on who needed every ounce of your time and energy. Years can go by without you even realizing it because your focus was exactly where it needed to be. That’s when the timeline shifts on its own.

8. Secondary infertility

This one deserves so much more attention. People see that you already have one child and assume everything worked out. They don’t see the years spent trying for another baby. They don’t see the dissapointments or fertility treatments.

You also don’t get the same kind of sympathy because people think you should just be grateful for the child you already have instead of grieving the one you’re desperately trying to bring into the world.

It can be an incredibly lonely place to be.

9. Family illness

Sometimes someone else needs you first. A parent gets sick or another family member needs your bandwidth and physcial support to get better. You become the person holding everything together, and before you know it, years have gone by.

10. Cancer or chronic illness

People don’t think about this one - sometimes you’re spending your twenties or thirties just trying to get healthy enough to have a baby. And, the treatment takes time - and recovering, healing, takes time. By the time you’re finally healthy enough to try, you’re suddenly staring at an age you never expected to be.

If you had your baby in your forties, or you’re hoping to someday, I want you to know something.

This can absolutely be one of the greatest blessings of your life.

It can also be really hard.

Some days are magical and many are exhausting. Sometimes you feel grateful and overwhelmed at the exact same time.

Both things can be true at the same time.

You’re not doing motherhood wrong if you’ve felt both.

This little corner of the internet is for women who are choosing motherhood later in life (or finding themselves here thru life circumstances)

I write here once a week.

I’d love to have you here.

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My story.

I am forty seven years old with a 1 year old and a 13 year old, living in the US. I had my first at 34, naturally, and my second at 45 through IVF. Before I started sharing my story on Instagram, I felt very lonely in this. I was the only new mom over 40 that I knew in my real life. But, building a community online and diving into the research made one thing very clear: I am not alone. At all.

The list of countries having the most babies after forty reads less like a fluke and more like a pattern. These are not random nations. They have something in common, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Here are the top ten countries having the most babies over forty, and the top 3 reasons why.

The Top Ten List, starting with number ten:

10. United States — 4.1% — 1 in every 24 births. For the first time in US history, more babies are born to women over 40 than to teenagers.

9. Australia — ~5% — 1 in every 20 births. Australia’s average age at first birth is now 31, up from 27 just two decades ago.

8. Switzerland — ~5.5% — 1 in every 18 births. Switzerland has one of the highest IVF utilization rates in the world, which directly drives its older mother numbers.

7. UK — ~5.5% — 1 in every 18 births. Women over 40 in the UK now have a higher fertility rate than women under 20, something last seen in the 1940s.

6. Luxembourg — ~6.5% — 1 in every 15 births. Luxembourg’s mean age at childbirth is above 32, placing it among the oldest mother countries on the planet.

5. Greece — ~7.5% — 1 in every 13 births. Greece has one of the lowest teen birth rates in the entire EU, under 2%.

4. Italy — ~9% — 1 in every 11 births. The average age of a first time mother in Italy is 31.8, the oldest in all of Europe.

3. South Korea — 9.5% — 1 in every 10.5 births. More than 1 in 3 mothers in South Korea gave birth at 35 or older in 2024.

2. Spain — 10.4% — 1 in every 10 births. The average age of a first time mother in Spain is 31.5, the third oldest in all of Europe.

1. Ireland — 11.2% — 1 in every 9 births. Up from just 1 in 29 in 2002. The rate has more than tripled in twenty years.

Now for the reasons why…

Reason #1: Women got educated and chose to postpone family.

Every single country on this top ten list is a highly developed, high income, highly educated nation, and this is not a coincidence. In many under-developed countries, about a hundred out of every thousand teenage girls give birth every year. In Europe and East Asia, that number drops to fewer than twenty. The more educated and independent a woman becomes, the later she chooses to start or grow a family. The more degrees, qualifications, and certifications you have, the later the baby comes, it seems.

Reason #2: You Can’t Afford a House, So You Can’t Afford a Baby

Believe it or not, your ability to afford a house can directly dictate your ability to have a baby. Research is drawing direct links between housing costs and delayed childbearing. Young people are saving everything they have to secure a home, and by the time they get into one, many women feel like they have missed or wasted their most fertile years.

Ireland, Spain, South Korea, and Italy are all experiencing severe housing affordability crises. These same four countries are in the top five on the list below. Having or not having a house can determine your entire family timeline.

Reason #3: Modern Medicine Bought Us More Time

Medical technology has bought women more time, and for a lot of women, that is a blessing and a godsend. Advances in IVF, egg freezing, and embryo preservation have made motherhood in your 30’s and 40’s more accessible than ever. Some women are even having babies in their 50’s. Just when you thought your fertile years were over, modern medicine swoops in the save the day for some. (But, nothing is guaranteed.)

Between 2021 and 2022 alone, births to women over 45 in the US rose by 12% . A 2024 study also found that older moms reported higher overall satisfaction with motherhood and greater emotional regulation during the stresses of raising children. For me, the biggest difference between becoming a mom at 45 versus thirty 34 is that I truly don’t sweat the small things. The hypervigilance I carried in my mid-30’s is gone, replaced by a more trusting attitude toward life and motherhood in general.

A Final Thought

I do think that motherhood later in life is a privilege. If you are educated, living in a highly developed country, able to pursue a career, and have access to IVF and modern medicine, you are likely in a privileged class. That is worth reflecting on. It raises real questions about mothering. Are you a better mother because you have more privileges, more perspective, and more life experience? Even when older motherhood also comes with more exhaustion and the very real physical demands of bearing children in your forties and running after toddlers while potentially navigating perimenopause? I think people will be weighing these two realities for a long time to come - especially in the comment section, lol.

We said ‘No kids’

When we got married, we weren’t sure we wanted kids at all. I was 30, he was 37. We had dogs. We traveled. We worked, and we thought we would be DINKs (dual income, no kids) for life. We truly thought this would sustain us. Children just weren’t in the plan.

But then one day... my husband changed his mind. He had watched some of his friends grow older without kids. They seemed lonely after divorces. Some of them had regrets about never having kids. And a few of them felt like career alone had less and less meaning as they grew older and accomplished more.

He couldn’t picture that future for us. So one day after work, he came to me and asked, “What would you think about having kids?”

I wasn’t completely opposed to it, but…

The honest story is I had been the eldest child, so I had been adultified while having a big role in tending and raising of my younger siblings.

And, in college, I became a nanny for three years and even felt like it was a natural fit. I loved tending to children, caring for them, and truly, truly enjoyed it.

But I felt like I had already had that experience and wanted to live life for myself.

And in my twenties, I did just that. I dated. I worked. I had fun with friends... I was living life truly for myself, and then I met the love of my life, my husband. We traveled. Got married. Decided NOT to have kids… but when he asked me this question, I decided to say yes.

So we decided to give it a try. At 32, I got pregnant, but unfortunately, I lost the pregnancy. We both grieved the loss in totally different ways. I have a chronic mood disorder and spiraled in a dangerous direction. I almost blew up our entire life. Experiencing that kind of loss put a lot of distance between us, and it all occurred before I even realized what was happening. We didn’t try to get pregnant for another nine months.

But, we eventually found our way back to each other and reconnected once again. I got pregnant right away. I was 34 when our son was born (already considered “older” for a 1st time mom.) My husband was 40.

Then I built something.

Then, as life happens, I had the opportunity to build something big, so I did. I built a business and a brand, a national conference in 2015, all organically online with Facebook and Instagram, back when no one had a name for what an influencer was and nobody had even been “canceled” yet.

For five years, it was everything to me, and I loved it, but I burned out.

This was also the second time I said no to another child, though it was less a decision and more a slow disappearing act. My husband asked off and on during that time of me raising my toddler and building a business... but I kept saying “not yet.”

I knew the weight of having another child would fall mostly on me as a mom. Sorry, but that’s just the cold hard truth.

So “not yet” became my answer, over and over, until “not yet” became maybe never. The bandwidth simply wasn’t there, and I let the years pass.

Then, when I turned 41, I sold my business. At that point though, my husband had stopped asking for a second child (even though he had never stopped wanting one). Honestly, I thought the ship had sailed after all of my procrastination, so I had put the topic out of my mind.

What changed my mind.

Then, three and a half years later, at 44, I read an article.

It talked about women in their late 40s finding different ways to have babies, even after fertility had waned. It opened my eyes in such a big way. I didn’t realize there were so many options for women over 40 (or even 50!) to have babies.

After reading that, I called my husband into the room immediately because it was like the article was a lightning bolt that had struck my heart. I asked him if he still wanted another baby. He said ‘YES!’ before I could finish the sentence. He was 51 years old.

I made appointments with several fertility doctors to interview them. We selected one who had high success rates in our area. We did the exact protocols they recommended that would give us the best chance for me to give birth to another child. We did not “hem.” We did not “haw.” We did not deliberate. Our minds were both made up. Make a baby ASAP, lol.

I became pregnant just after I turned 45, and I gave birth to our daughter just before I turned 46.

And now there is a third question mark.

We still have embryos. The question of whether to try for a third is still there, sitting quietly in the back of my mind.

But I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure if that pull is a genuine desire or if it’s tied to the regret I carry about waiting so long for the second. I would be forty-eight, and my husband would be fifty-five, if we decided today to pursue another embryo transfer.

And although I had a mostly healthy pregnancy, I did experience complications in the last week of pregnancy and during the delivery, and I had a very rough postpartum.

Those things give me real pause, in addition to the question marks I have about keeping up with a teen, a toddler, and a newborn (what could possibly go wrong? lol). I’ll share more about my pregnancy and birth journey in a future post. So if that’s a story you want to hear, stay close.

Who this Substack account is for.

This Substack is for women like me... Maybe you built your career first. Maybe you put off having a child until later, and now you’re sitting with a lot of question marks or discouragement. I see you. This is a space for women over forty doing motherhood, or contemplating motherhood, on your own terms. We talk about what it really means to be a mature mom, to parent later than most, and to do it without apology.

But, our friends are going to New Kids on the Block reunion concerts on a Saturday night. They’re planning weekend getaways with their girlfriends, reserving Sunday brunch, living their best lives. And I love that for them.

But I’m home with a toddler and a teenager, adhering to a nap schedule and a bedtime schedule that does not care about their reservations.

They try to include me. They really do. There is always an invitation in my text messages. But hearing “can’t you just get a sitter” can sometimes rub me the wrong way.

Just a little bit.

They don’t mean it in an insensitive way. It’s just that they’ve forgotten what this season actually looks like. Maybe they don’t need to remember anymore. Their lives have changed, and they’re moving on from diapers & driver’s ED to college dorms and even grandkids!

So I tried fitting in with the younger mom groups. After all, they have kids around the ages of my kids. But they’re buying their first house. They’re building their careers from scratch. Some of them are newly married and still figuring out life with their spouse.

We already have a teenager. The careers have been established. We’ve been together for over twenty years. We could have been winding down. But instead we decided to hit the reset button.

In fact, my husband could have retired early. We had gotten to the other side of “hard.” And then we chose this. It was a beautiful and intentional choice, but not one that everyone would make, and definitely not one that looks traditional on paper.

And that means I don’t always have someone who gets it.

The young moms don’t know what perimenopause feels like yet. They’re not experiencing rapid aging in their face and their body. They’re not googling hormone replacement therapy at midnight after they’ve woken up in hot flash - or doing the math about time.

I’m constantly figuring out how old I’ll be when my youngest gets her driver’s license, graduates college, when my teenager gets married, when they’ll both buy their first houses. How old will I be during these milestones? Will I get to see all of them, especially grandchildren?

My husband and I are Gen X, and our friends are too - or elder millennials. We remember a time when nothing was documented and we were set loose on the neighborhoods. No cell phones in sight - not even for our parents.

The younger moms don’t remember a time before text messsages or the internet. It’s just not the same. We may be in the same parenting season, but culturally, something doesn’t click.

For a while, I felt like I was somewhere in between. In no man’s land. Too deep into motherhood for my empty nester friends, too far down the road for the young moms. I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere specific, and it was a loneliness I didn’t anticipate and was not prepared for.

One night I started scrolling. I was looking for someone who sounded and looked like me, who was doing the same thing at the same age. And surprisingly, I found them. Thousands and thousands of women just like me, all over forty, with toddlers or babies on their hips.

They were tired in the same specific way I could relate to. They were loving the life they had chosen intentionally, but still struggling with it in the same breath.

They were women doing motherhood on their own timeline.

I truly had no idea there were so many of us.

I’m starting this newsletter for all the women who feel like I did. The ones who are in between. Too seasoned for the starter chapter, but too deep into motherhood to be done.

Over forty, still in the thick of new motherhood, building families, expanding families, or starting a family for the first time. Building something beautiful, even when society tells them it’s too late.

If that’s you, you’re in the right place. Join our community

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