More women take on the risk, and reap rewards, of having children later in life.

(May 7, 2010, LARGO, FLORIDA)--Vicki Berk and Maud Hoffman got the same reactions when people found out they wanted to become mothers for the first time in their 40s.

"Are you nuts?" Berk, 53, recalled hearing from some. "You're kidding me," Hoffman, 47, was told a few times.

The two friends were neither nuts nor kidding. In fact, they're in growing company.

Across Florida and the United States, more women are bucking the odds, accepting the risks and - in many cases - absorbing high costs to have children at an age when some peers are welcoming grandchildren. The number of women 45 and older giving birth in Florida is small, but it has more than doubled in the last decade.

Many, like Berk, have been helped by fertility treatments [http://www.acog.org/publications/patient_education/bp137.cfm], while others, like Hoffman, have overcome long odds against spontaneous pregnancy so close to menopause [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/menopause.html].

"The demographics of pregnancy have changed drastically," said Dr. Robert Yelverton, chief medical officer of Women's Care Florida [http://www.womenscarefl.com], a Tampa-based network of more than 100 obstetricians. "But it's a trend we as obstetricians worry about because getting pregnant and having a child at later ages carries increased risk."

Those may include pregnancy complications [http://www.womenshealth.gov/pregnancy/you-are-pregnant/pregnancy-complications.cfm] such as maternal diabetes and dangerously high blood pressure, pre-term births and birth defects such as Down syndrome [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/downsyndrome.html].

Berk and Hoffman are among the small but growing number of women who roll the dice and beat the house.

Berk had son Micah when she was 49, and daughter Peri last year at 52. Hoffman had son Cody when she was 43 and daughter Matilda when she was 46. All four pregnancies were without complications; all four children were born healthy.
And though both women endured their share of concerned comments during their pregnancies, each also found support from their husbands, friends and family...Read more

Source: St. Petersburg Times