Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

See, it's not just me

Pregnancy in the over 40s has reached a record high - proving how fashionable it's become to have children later in life. The conception rate has risen across women of all ages - but is most marked in the over 40s. Pregnancies have jumped up by more than 6% from 11.5 per 1,000 women aged 40-44 in 2005, to 12.2 last year. It's worth remembering that the over 40s still account for a tiny percentage of all births - around 3% - but that figure has tripled over recent years as more women, like myself, defer childbearing until later in life.

The Telegraph reports that the news will prompt 'fears that the growing number of older mothers is placing increased pressure on maternity units'. Writing as someone aged 40 and 21 weeks pregnant, you can imagine how thrilled I was to read that. It's such rubbish that older women are causing problems in the NHS.

Apart from going mental when I told a locum GP I was pregnant and she asked me (without looking away from her screen) if I was planning on continuing with my pregnancy, (I never went back to her) I follow all the instructions in pregnancy - little or no alcohol, sticking to (probably spurious) caffeine limits, no cold remedies, fear of pate and liver, obsession with pasteurisation, location of nearby hospitals etc. My roots are growing through grey; I'm too scared to risk hair colouring. Baths are tepid.

Every health professional I've interviewed for my book on being an older mum, Fashionably Late, agrees that older mums are often less of a problem to the health service because, like me, they're compliant and do as they're told, like cutting out smoking, since they want the child so much. That leads to reduced (or zero) risk of complications like listeria infection, foetal alcohol syndrome, poor growth rates.

So it's a bit rich to blame older mums for strains in the health service, whose problems obviously go far beyond a few later starters like myself having babies later on in life.

Needless to say, The Telegraph does not miss the opportunity to have a dig at women concentrating on their careers, claiming that when professional women return to work after having children they often move 'into jobs where the average employee lacks even A-levels'. Can this be true? It's not my experience - or that of my friends. But still, makes for grisly reading.

Older women are often attacked for their 'selfish' emphasis on 'careers' (for 'career' read, grafting away in some horrible job to pay rent/mortgage while being messed around by some bloke too immature to commit to family/children) but this means we've paid shedloads more in tax to fund the NHS. So why shouldn't we cash in our tax investment and get something back? Most of us won't be getting any tax relief on childcare expenses, or much in the way of government maternity benefits, (unlike in most European countries) so we might as well enjoy having our babies on the NHS.

Posted 28 February 2008 15:34

Childbirth Fashionably Late - the book Older mother Health Pregnancy Work Work vs mothering

• StumbleUpon
• Delicious
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Digg