42 and Pregnant - the grim statistics

Cheeseface

Congratulations OP, I am pleased that you have appeared to have sorted out the petty jealousy issue.

seven-day-weekend

Congratulations! Just be with your girlfriend, support her, look after her and help her to look after herself. Take all the medical advice and she should be fine. Many people have normal pregnancies and births at her age.

Do let us know when the little one arrives!!

Honeysucklelou2

Congratulations!

I had my youngest at the age of 41. The only difference between that pregnancy and my previous pregnancies was the insistence of the consultants to induce me on the due date as they didn't want me to go over that. In the event they gave me a little more grace at the time but I did go in for monitoring every 2 days between due date and actual birth date to ensure everything was ok.

Loz01

My cousin and his wife had their first baby when his wife was 42, they had a second baby this year and she is 45, a month off being 46. She didn't have any major complications, in fact when she expressed a worry about being 45, the doctor told her not to listen to the scaremongering and women can still safely have babies at 45. And she did lol.

indianabones

The statistics are clear. I know a lot of people don't like to look at them as they can be depressing but the reality is they are a very strong indicator of likely scenarios. Our first miscarriage was my wife was 27 and 12/13 weeks pregnant. It was about 18 months later that we managed to have a successful pregnancy. As difficult as it may seem and I'm not going to pretend this is possible, but seriously all you can do is carry on with your life as normal and see how it goes. Stressing will just hinder the chances of a success even more.

jackyann

Retired midwife and health visitor here.
I'd agree that anecdotal evidence is not the best, but anything that helps reassure you is fine!
Regarding statistical evidence, there is one huge factor to bear in mind - however up to date, it is, by definition, already old.
I trained in the 1970s. Women then giving birth in their 40s had been born in the 30s and for many, their care as children had not been good.
As time passed, the health of women in their 40s has got better and better - partly because the care they received as children has got better. So your GF, born circa 1965 is likely to be in good health, and that is the biggest factor.
And it is statistically likely that your midwife will be a kind, helpful and positive person!

squirrelchops

My mum was 43 when she had me. No issues at all during pregnancy and labour. Natural conception too.

FreddieFrugal

jackyann wrote: »

So your GF, born circa 1965 is likely to be in good health, and that is the biggest factor.

That would make her 52!

BucksLady

My husband's mother was 44 when she gave birth and that was 40 years ago - everything was fine. Just stay positive and remember that pregnancy can be a very emotional and tiring process, so she may need a little more support. Hope everything goes well for you both

jamesperrett

Congratulations on the pregnancy - hope it is still going well. I'm going to echo most of the reassuring words here. My wife had our only son when she was 44. We had had one miscarriage about 18 months before that at 9 weeks where it looked like the embryo never actually developed. Our doctor said that this was very common and many women don't actually realise they are pregnant at that stage - hence the under-reporting of miscarriages.

With our next pregnancy we were under the care of the fertility clinic (although the baby was conceived naturally) which gave us the luxury of a 6 week scan that showed us all was normal.

Right from an early stage we decided that we wanted a home birth and, like olgadapolga, we encountered resistance from some midwives but good support from others in the profession who guided us through the process of changing midwife to one who was more supportive. We found that the NCT ante-natal course was really helpful for both of us. The NCT were also really helpful in the first few days after birth as we struggled to find our way through breast feeding - a few minutes with the NCT breast feeding counsellor worked wonders.

As jackyann say, one of the biggest factors in having a pregnancy with no complications is the health of the mother. We found a very good academic study (sorry don't have the reference to hand) which looked at the pregnancy process for older women and the various factors that affected the outcome. The reason that older mothers have more problems is that more of them have health problems. If you take a sample of women at different ages in similar health, the pregnancy outcomes for the older mothers aren't much worse than for younger mothers.