Rise and rise of the OVER FIFTY mothers
As three babies a week are born to women in their sixth decade, why experts are increasingly worried by the...
GETTING the rambunctious four-year- old twins dressed takes Karen the best part of an hour. Then comes the ordeal of breakfast with their older sister Willow, six. The schoolgirl refuses to eat anything at all, while the twins throw their food all over the kitchen and spill their drinks.
You’d assume Karen, a well-preserved but clearly exhausted 58, is the children’s harried grandmother on babysitting duty for the Easter holidays. But actually these are her children, conceived using IVF and donor eggs.
At an age when her friends are approaching a peaceful retirement, Karen’s life consists of an endless round of feeding, bathing, playing and school runs. Far from being unusual, this set-up is increasingly common. Welcome to the brave new world of motherhood.
Karen is among a growing group of women who are experiencing motherhood in their sixth decade, mostly having used science to outwit nature, despite the huge risks to their health and their child, and the inevitable burden placed on NHS services. The number of over-50s giving birth has more than doubled in the past five years, with three children every week in Britain born to a mother in this age group.
Experts say it will have enormous implications for future generations.
The mental images the statistics conjure are disquieting: pregnant mothers with stretch marks and arthritis, toddlers with mummies who look like grannies and teenagers whose parents are drawing pensions alongside child benefits.
The statistics are of profound concern to the medical profession.
Dr Alastair Sutcliffe, consultant paediatrician at University College London, says: ‘ We are seeing two major trends in obstetrics. One is the rise in the number of obese mothers; the other is the rise in older mothers. Maternal mortality is likely to increase because of these two factors.’
Women who conceive in their 50s are at a far higher risk of suffering from dangerously high blood pressure and potentially fatal blood clots.
The baby is more likely to be born prematurely or have Down’s syndrome. There is also double the risk of stillbirth.
But these risks failed to deter mother- of- ten Karen from Bicester, Oxfordshire, when she decided to restart her family at a cut- price clinic in the Czech Republic.
Her oldest child was 31 and Karen was going through the menopause when, at the age of 52, she suddenly hankered for another baby.
This feeling will resonate with many women: a nostalgic, rose-tinted look back at the baby years. Few act on this feeling, but Karen wanted to fight nature.
‘I had two miscarriages after my youngest son Joseph, 17, was born, and my womb ached for another child,’ she says.
‘One day I saw a woman on TV who had conceived using donor eggs in her 60s. It was a lightbulb moment. I just thought: “Why not?”
‘My husband Roger knew it would make me happy, so he went along with it. My GP explained the risks to me and the baby, but by then my mind was made up.’
ROGER and Karen travelled to the clinic in December 2006 and stayed in a local hotel for three nights while Karen was given hormone injections to restart her menstrual cycle.
The following April, a donor egg became available and Karen returned to the clinic, where she was put on a high dose of HRT and progesterone before an egg, fertilised using Roger’s sperm, was implanted in her womb. The whole procedure cost £3,000.
Willow was conceived on her first attempt.
The pregnancy, she admits, was ‘horrendous’. She swelled up like a balloon, was continually exhausted and confined to bed for much of it.
But, a year later, Karen was itching to do it all over again. Despite Roger’s concerns, she dug into the family’s savings and returned to the Czech
Republic for more IVF. But on this occasion, their luck nearly ran out: Imogen and Asa were born three months prematurely, weighing just 2lb 1oz and 2lb 4oz, after a traumatic labour that left Karen and her babies fighting for their lives.
Despite the overwhelming medical evidence, Karen insists the same complications might have arisen if she was younger. As she points out, the children do not appear to be suffering any long-term effects.
‘Women much younger than me have
THE problems giving birth,’ she says. realities of coping with three young children at an advanced age soon became dramatically obvious. Money was a serious issue and Roger, who works for BMW and has diabetes, was forced to get a job in London, meaning they live separate lives.
Even worse, her older children were extremely unhappy with her decision to have more babies and no longer speak to her as a result.
‘My older children didn’t approve,’ she says. ‘It’s put a horrible black cloud over the whole experience and instead of it being joyful, I’ve been very depressed.’
According to Karen, her family were ‘judgmental’. She suspects they worry about what would happen to their young siblings if anything should happen to their mother.
All her older children met and loved Willow, but she admits her decision to have the twins was the final straw. Only her eldest child has met them, she says, and things have since soured with him, too. Many experts share her children’s consternation. Josephine Quintavalle, of campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, says: ‘Post-50 is the decade to become a grandmother, not a mother.
‘ We should respect nature’s wisdom and re - educate women to come to terms with their natural biology.’ E mma S o a me s , editor-in- chief of over-50s magazine Saga, advises women to t hink carefully before deciding to have a child so late in life.
‘Embarking on having a child in your 50s is a high-risk strategy — not because of how you are at 50, but because of what you might be like when you’re 66,’ she says.
‘There have been some troubling cases of people having a child in their 50s, then regretting it bitterly. After all, a small child is exhausting.’
Indeed, there have been several cases of women who forged ahead with plans to reproduce in their 50s with unhappy outcomes.
In 2008, Sue Tollefsen, from Harold Wood, Essex, received the questionable accolade of being Britain’s oldest first-time IVF mother when she gave birth to her daughter Freya at the age of 57, following treatment in Moscow.
The relationship she was in at the time has since foundered, and when she contracted a serious blood infection that left her hospitalised recently, the frightening reality that she might not be capable of caring for her daughter into old age hit home.
‘It’s so true that you learn from your mistakes,’ she says. ‘And my mistake was not having Freya sooner.’
Then there was the sad story of Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara, the Spanish woman who gave birth to IVF twins days before turning 67.
She died of ovarian cancer in 2009, leaving the twins orphaned before their third birthday.
These stories make uncomfortable reading for mother-of-three Pauline Lyon, 70, from March, Cambridgeshire.
She became Britain’s then oldest
IVF mother when she conceived her youngest two children, Lauren, 19, and Brodie, 15, with IVF and donor eggs in a London clinic.
Pauline lied to doctors that she was 49 when she was actually 51 to get treatment (the cut-off point at which private British clinics will administer IVF is usually 50).
Yet despite her advanced years, she insists she does everything other mothers of teenagers do.
She enjoys Saturday shopping trips to Topshop and Miss Selfridge with her teenage daughter, despite being 20 years older than her friends’ mothers, and is resigned to constantly tidying up after her teenage son.
‘I used to be asked often if I was their grandmother, but I didn’t mind. I just corrected people,’ she says. ‘ My children have never commented on my age. If I had my time over again I would do the same thing.’
Despite her defiant approach, it’s a different story health- wise. Pauline suffers from high blood pressure and arthritis.
Her husband David, a retired chef, suffers from heart problems so severe he is regularly admitted to hospital and has a blood clot in his legs so painful he can walk only short distances.
‘Now David’s ill, the children worry about him and the fact he may not be here as long,’ she says.
‘Obviously it’s on my mind we won’t live to see our grandchildren, but ill health can descend on anyone, whatever your age.’
But Philippa Taylor, head of public policy at the Christian Medical Fellowship, believes mothers like Pauline are deluded and questions their belief that having a child is ‘their right’.
‘The increasing use of IVF to allow women to have babies when t hey are ol d enough t o be grandmothers is driven by society’s near universal belief that it is everyone’s human right to be entitled to exactly the same things as everyone else,’ she says.
‘What that means in the case of IVF for older women is that their rights are granted even if this is at the expense of the needs and best interests of children they bear.’
But is it all doom and gloom for Britain’s new wave of 50-something mothers? Is having a baby later in life just a logical progression after life expectancy has doubled in the past 200 years?
Studies in the U.S. have found that having a child after 40 increases your chances of living to 100 by more than four times — it’s thought to be linked to a more active lifestyle.
Dr Alastair Sutcliffe, consultant paediatrician at University College London, confirms that in terms of older mothers’ parenting skills, the research is ‘very positive’.
‘Children born to older mothers are less likely to attend hospital, less likely to develop illnesses and are more likely to have satisfaction in their experience of parenting — and this is irrespective of social class,’ he says.
And women having children after 45 is hardly a new thing. Before widespread birth control became available, large families were commonplace. Countless generations took it for granted that women would go on having children right through their fertile years. And it is something that still happens today. Debbie Hughes, a 56year-old mother of three, from Daventry, Northamptonshire, astonished the medical profession by conceiving naturally at 53.
She was not only on the Pill, but had what she describes as ‘a once-in-ablue moon’ love life. ‘When I saw the two blue lines, my heart was thumping so hard I thought it would burst out of my chest,’ says Debbie, who is also a grandmother of two. ‘My first thought was: “I’m too old, this can’t be right.” ’ But Debbie and her partner Paul, who was then 45, decided to have the baby.
She was told the chances of Down’s syndrome were one in three, but declined all tests.
Kyle was born perfectly healthy on June 22, 2011, weighing 7lb 11oz, following a one-hour labour at Northampton Hospital.
WHeN life dealt her an unexpected setback, the realities of being a mother in her 50s of a young child became brutally apparent.
She split up from Paul, a HGV driver, 13 months ago, leaving her a single mother. ‘The split was nothing to do with Kyle,’ she says. ‘ The relationship broke down because of differences between us. But the upshot is that I’ve brought up Kyle alone and that wasn’ t what I intended.’
However much she adores her son, there are inevitably times when she worries about the long-term implications of having a child so late in life. ‘Sometimes, when I watch Kyle play, my mind wanders and I worry about not living to see his 30s, but you just have to put those thoughts to the back of your mind,’ she says. ‘Plus, I never get “me-time” — my friends are all retiring and pursuing their hobbies or moving abroad. I’ll be an active parent well into my 70s, so I’ll never have that freedom.
‘My parents are dead so there’s no one to help with Kyle, I’ve got him on my own 24/7. Of course, it’s challenging and I admit I’ m struggling.’
‘Maybe if I was financially secure and in a stable relationship, I could have made a provision for his future and things would be easier.
‘But whatever the difficulties, Kyle is a blessing.’
Meanwhile, some mothers argue that, instead of being selfish, their decision to have babies in their 50s has made them better parents.
Trained barrister and social worker Carole Hobson, 61, who became Britain’s oldest mother of IVF twins when she gave birth to Frieda and Matthew when she was 58, argues that she is better placed to give her children the attention, time and stimulation they need.
A woman in her 60s, she argues, isn’t trying — like her 30-something counterparts —to combine motherhood with climbing the career ladder.
‘I’m more devoted to my children because I’ve achieved more in life,’ she says.
‘I’m not desperate to prove anything to myself at work. I’ve already achieved and am happy to dedicate all of my time to my them.’
And while advances in reproductive medicine continue, Carole says society had better get used to the sight of older mothers like her.
‘Britain is getting out of step with the rest of the world in its attitude to older women having children,’ she says. ‘We’re going to see a lot more of it.’