New mothers aged 60 ‘soon commonplace’

WOMEN giving birth in their sixties will soon become much more common as starting a family is being left later than ever, experts have warned.

The world’s largest fertility conference, held this week in the US, is now advising professionals on dealing with the rise of so-called ‘grey mothers’, with celebrities blamed for making late motherhood look easy and risk-free.

However fertility psychologists say that women who undergo IVF to have babies in their fifties and sixties run the risk of traumatising their children by dying or becoming ill, and also face serious medical complications by becoming pregnant so late in life.

Latest figures show that babies born to women aged 50 to 54 quadrupled in a generation – from 55 in 2001 to 238 in 2016.

In those over 55, there were two babies born in 2001 and 20 in 2016.

There are no figures for women in their sixties, but Britain’s oldest mother, Elizabeth Adeney, gave birth at the age of 66 in 2009 following IVF treatment in Ukraine. She said: ‘It’s not physical age that is important, it’s how I feel inside.’

Dr Julianne Zweifel and Dr Julia Woodward, clinical psychologists from Wisconsin-Madison and Duke universities, held the training course on older mothers at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Denver.

Dr Zweifel said: ‘The drive to be a mother is so strong they don’t think about the problems their child will face until after it is born.’

Dr Woodward added: ‘Women think, “I can wait longer because the IVF clinic will solve it”.’

Experts suggest that the ‘Janet Jackson effect’ is encouraging the trend – the pop singer was 50 when she had her first child.

This year, actresses Brigitte Nielsen and Rachel Weisz had daughters – at 54 and 48 respectively.

Professor Geeta Nargund, medical director of Create Fertility, said: ‘Women are leaving it late to have children in Britain and reproductive tourism for older women, to go abroad for donor eggs and come back pregnant, is increasing.’