Pregnancies double after age 40: "When I retire, my son will be 16."

Barcelona"I'm excited and very happy, but I think a lot about the future and sometimes I think he'll be alone or that when I retire he'll be 16," admits Carmen Martín, who is playing with little Mati on the floor of their dining room. She is 48 years old and he is a year and a half old. When she met her current partner, they were both in their forties, and she already knew she wasn't going to be a mother, that the time had passed. But he really wanted to, he convinced her, and they went to a fertility clinic to see what options they had. "If we want to be parents, we have to be now," she recalls, referring to the urgency and excitement of that moment. At the center, they underwent a study that revealed that Carmen would no longer be able to have children with her own eggs; she needed those of a donor to have a better chance of getting pregnant. The surprise came when she succeeded on the first try, which is very difficult, since it usually takes several attempts.

Despite the initial joy, the path was not easy. During pregnancy, she suffered from preeclampsia, a complication that usually appears in the last two months of pregnancy and increases blood pressure and can put the life of both mother and baby at risk. Fortunately, both mother and child were born safe and sound, but with this history and at her age, doctors have advised against having more. "I would like Mati to have another one now. I would like Mati to have siblings, but I will be cautious," explains Carmen. Like her, more and more women in Catalonia are having children after the age of forty, and they now represent one in ten births. In fact, it is the only age group in which there are more births now than fifteen years ago, when the birth rate began to plummet in our house, according to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE).

Births in this age group represented 4.7% of all births in 2009 and currently account for 10.86%. There are many reasons behind the delay in motherhood, from modern lifestyles and difficulties in balancing work and family life to professional ambition and increasing job insecurity. Francisco Carmona, director of the endometriosis unit and uterus transplant program at Hospital Clínic and scientific director of Women's, affirms that this reality has forced gynecology professionals to adapt and offer alternatives so that women can get pregnant at a later age without putting their health or that of the baby at risk: gestational diabetes or hypertension. We must ensure that these types of complications are avoided and minimize them when they occur."

Despite the efforts of healthcare professionals to increase the success of assisted reproduction techniques, almost no one succeeds the first time like Carmen. This is the case of Filipa Siopa, who was 32 years old when she and her partner decided they wanted to start a family, but she didn't become a mother until she was 41. As her ovarian reserve was very low when they started trying, they accessed a fertility program to increase their chances of getting pregnant. At the time, she didn't know it, but then Filipa began a tortuous journey, full of ups and downs, to get pregnant with Apolo, her two-year-old son. "For eight and a half years, our lives came to a standstill. I was undergoing constant treatments, we couldn't go on vacation because we had no money due to the treatments. "Emotionally it was hard," she recalls now that the stage she had longed for has finally begun.

"I'm exhausted, but I have more patience."

Carmona advises that if someone plans to become a mother after the age of 35, they should go to a fertility preservation clinic and freeze their eggs. This is not the case for women with a condition that threatens their fertility, such as a woman with cancer who must undergo chemotherapy. Even so, the expert recognizes the efforts made by the Department of Health to offer assisted reproduction techniques and improve access: in Catalonia, all women under the age of 40 can access them. This is the case of Elisabet Dubé, who turned 42 last July and has been the mother of Noah for four months. She began to grow impatient and considered going to a fertility clinic, something she didn't want to do at the beginning of the process because she knows the "emotional drain" it can entail, but her desire for a second child was overwhelming her. Compared to her first birth, she now exercises, eats healthy, sleeps more, and regularly sees a physical therapist to recover her pre-pregnancy body. "I'm exhausted, but I'm more patient," Isabel explains, half asleep, as she waits to be called into the doctor's office. She believes that when her son turns three, everything will be easier, but in the meantime, she assures that Noah gives her the energy she needs to get through life.