For years, women have been badgered about “leaving it too late” to conceive, and the paranoia has left many worrying about fertility when they are still in their twenties.

It was the news stories about declining fertility that made me more casual about contraception when I married for the second time. My husband and I – combined age of 83 – figured that there was more chance of us winning the lottery than having a baby. Though I was utterly unprepared, having a baby at 41 has been a fantastic experience.

When my first three children were born – I had my first at 26 and twins at 29 – I was too busy proving myself to allow myself to appreciate them. Managing babies and a career is difficult when you are young. I felt like a second-class citizen pushing a double buggy, and I wanted to wear a T-shirt that said: “I actually have an MA, you know.”

Although research from the General Household Survey shows that 28 per cent of women with degrees remain childless at 40 compared with 16 per cent of women with no qualifications, that small gulf is more to do with romantic aspirations than a desire to put business before biology.

Good men are hard to find and harder to keep. I can’t count the friends who were shacked up in their early thirties and traded in for a younger model just as they began to think about marriage and kids. The idea that a generation of women are too obsessed by their careers to have children is a fantasy. They didn’t want to go it alone.

Fertility does decline with age but these figures show that women who are fit and healthy at 40 are clearly capable of getting pregnant and producing healthy babies. Hurrah! Suzi Godson writes for The Times ’s Body&Soul section

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