Stars such as Halle Berry and Tina Fey gave birth after age 40, but this doesn’t mean it could happen for anybody.
Fertility doctors warn that celebrities may secretly use IVF or donor eggs to have successful births after age 37, or use surrogates to carry the infants, giving false hope about motherhood, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reports.
The issue is being discussed because of a new study showing the surprisingly fast decline of fertility rates for women in their mid-40s: it’s almost twenty times as hard to get pregnant at age 44 as it is via IVF at 39.
Dr. Marta Devesa, researcher and physician at Hospital Universitari Quiron-Dexeus in Barcelona, said: “It is true that pregnancies in older women and celebrities don’t help us because many people don’t know that most of the time, they have gone for egg donation.”
Celebrities who were upfront about having older children include Nicole Kidman, who acknowledged that her daughter was born through a surrogate mother when Kidman was 43.
This knowledge sparked a debate among medical professionals on whether or not it is best for women to wait longer to bear children.
Professor Robert Winston, IVF creator and spokesperson, said that waiting longer for pregnancy is a good thing because women have more time to establish themselves and provide a more stable upbringing for their kids.
On the other hand, Professor Charles Kingsland of the Hewitt Fertility Centre at Liverpool Women’s Hospital disagrees saying women should take into account their fertility rates when choosing to delay families. “I’m amazed that even the most well-informed of women still don’t realize just how much age affects fertility,” he added.
