Over 50 and pregnant: the rise of older mums

As stars such as Hilary Swank and Rachel Weisz decide to have babies at a later age, so too are many London women, despite health concerns and social judgment. Claire Cohen reports

- Claire Cohen

WHEN Naomi Gryn was pregnant with her daughter, Sadie, she decided not to do NCT classes for fear of being seen as "freakish". Nor did she feel entirely at home in the London hospital where she gave birth.

"Then there was an awful moment when the obstetrician looked at me condescendingly and said 'well, you'll probably go into distress and we'll have to do an emergency C-section anyway, so why don't we just cut to the chase?' I didn't want to be this fussy woman in her fifties who was insisting on a vaginal birth and felt judged by some of the doctors, like 'well, since you've been a silly lady and put yourself into this situation, I suppose we've got to sort it out for you"""

Yet, at 51, Gryn was far from an outlier. New data shows that the number of women in the UK giving birth over 45 is on the rise - it was more than 2,000 in 2022, the highest level since records began 80 years ago. More than five women aged 50-plus gave birth every week between 2018 and 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The majority of those are likely to be Londoners. A 2017 study found that those living in the capital wait longer than people anywhere else in the country to start a family and thought the ideal age to do so was 37 - a number that's likely to have risen since the pandemic, with our lives put on hold and delays in fertility treatment. Not to mention the high profile older mothers, from Janet Jackson - who was 50 when she gave birth to her son in 2017 - to Rachel Weisz, who had her first child with husband Daniel Craig aged 48, in 2018. The latest is Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank, who gave birth to twins this month, aged 48, writing on Instagram that "it wasn't easy, but it was worth it".