She had a baby at 40 after years of being anti-kids. Now she wants another.

Alicia Grez never wanted to be a mom.

Some of her friends had kids in their 30s, but she never felt that tugging feeling. She liked her autonomy and her partner did, too.

But in her last year of her 30s, a nagging thought crept into her mind. What if she later regretted never having kids? Should she try now, before it was too late?

"I don't want to look back and be like, 'Man, did I miss something big?'" Grez said. She talked to her partner, and they hesitantly started trying for a baby.

Whether they're preventing future regrets, waiting to find the right partner or focusing on careers and financial stability first, it's no question that more women over 40 are becoming first-time moms. While birth rates are down in the United States and across the globe, fertility rates have risen among American women 40 and older. From 2023 to 2024, birth rates declined for women aged 15-34, were unchanged for women aged 35-39 and rose 2% for women aged 40-44, according to the most recent data released in July of 2025.

Because some women are waiting longer to start having kids, America's declining fertility rate "may not be as big as it seems," said Emily Oster, an economics professor at Brown University and CEO of ParentData, a parenting research forum. There's a chance the United States sees more births in the next several years, she said, though women who become first-time moms in their 40s still face barriers.

"If people wait a very long time, there's less of a chance they'll be able to have as many kids as they want," Oster said.

When Grez went in for her first mammogram, she felt that something was off and asked to take a pregnancy test first. Later that day, she told her partner she didn't have her mammogram after all.

"He was like, 'Well, why?' I said, 'Well, they can't do X-Rays or imaging when you're pregnant,'" she said. "You could hear him smiling from ear to ear on the phone. It was really sweet."

When she told her friends and family she was pregnant at 40, they didn't believe her, because she'd never expressed any interest in kids. Now 41, Grez and her family live in Maine and are trying for a second baby.

"My (OB/GYN) is like, hey, if you're going to have (another) baby, you don't need to wait however long 'regular' people are supposed to wait," she said. "Because you're old, essentially."

'Terrified that something would happen.' What are the risks with older pregnancies?

Family planning is personal, and there are myriad reasons why more women are waiting to have kids, said Dr. Lora Shahine, a reproductive endocrinologist at Ivy Fertility’s Pacific Northwest Fertility clinic in Seattle. A 2022 survey from the Institute for Family Studies found that among women aged 18-55 who want more children, 44% cited not finding the right partner as a barrier, 36% cited affordability and 25% cited lifestyle or career.

Affordability and lack of support were factors for Sarah Kaufman and her husband when they were younger and working in academia, living far from their families. Kaufman, 42, is 33 weeks pregnant and excited to be a first-time mom after being married for almost 18 years.

"For the longest time, it was really just an income thing," she said. "We felt like we were both following our dreams, but we weren't making a lot of money."

Once they felt more financially stable, and moved closer to family, they talked about having kids again.

"We've done so much in our life. Like, what's next?" Kaufman said. "That's what led to finally deciding to start a family."

Shahine said she sees a lot of women who are trying to plan their pregnancies several years, or even a decade, in advance and making "really thoughtful decisions about when and how they build their family." Some of them are scared about the health risks involved in older pregnancies. Grez told USA TODAY she was excited about being pregnant, "but I was also terrified that something would happen."

While it's routine and possible for women to have children in their 40s, Shahine said age does impact fertility and how long it might take to get pregnant, including the risk of miscarriage.

"I think there's a common assumption that fertility treatment can overcome anything," Shahine said.

Egg freezing and in-vitro fertilization are important tools to help with fertility struggles in older mothers, said Danielle Melfi, CEO of Resolve, a fertility patient advocacy group. More women are choosing to freeze their eggs than ever before, she said.

"While egg freezing isn't a guarantee," Melfi said, "it does help women feel like they have more time to make some of these decisions."

Melfi is one of those women.

"I personally made that decision, freezing my eggs in my early 30s, because I knew I wasn't ready to have kids at this point in time," she said. She didn't have a partner then, and was focusing on her career. "We hear that story time and time again."

Everyone is different, Shahine said, and women shouldn't make assumptions about their fertility based on the women in their family who have become mothers before them.

"Our biggest piece of advice is consulting with your doctor," Melfi said.

Some women are waiting to become mothers. For others, 'God's timing' just worked out that way.

Unlike Grez, 44-year-old Sherita Coardes always wanted to have kids. She was the designated babysitter in her family growing up, and said she's always had "a love for children."

As she got older, she realized that while she wanted to be a mom, she "didn't want to be a statistic" and wanted to "do it the right way" by waiting until she was a bit older, with a stable partner. She made a plan to have kids in her 30s.

But her 30s came and went, and no baby came. She started dating her now-husband in her mid-30s, and though they tried for a few years, Coardes wasn't getting pregnant. She gave herself a cutoff, deciding that if she wasn't pregnant by the time she turned 40, she wouldn't be a mom.

"Honestly, I felt as though I wouldn't have the patience to be a mom at the age of 40," she said. "And then medically, you know, you hear of the horror stories of moms who have children at an older age."

She wasn't OK with not being a mom, but she tried to convince herself she could be. Eventually, a friend convinced her to do away with her self-imposed deadline. In April of 2023, she found out she was pregnant with her son.

"It happened naturally," she said. "It was God's timing."

Once she was pregnant, Coardes said none of her previous worries about being an older mom remained. She was just excited. Her mantra is, "If it's meant to be, it will happen."

Conversations she's had with other moms have only made her more confident in becoming a first-time mom in her 40s. Some people who had kids in their 20s or 30s, she said, sometimes tell her they wish they had waited.

"I know for me, I feel like I'm more stable financially, mentally, physically in my 40s than I was in my younger years," Coardes said. She wonders if others, too, are thinking: "Let me make sure that my life is going smoothly before I bring a child into this world."

Creating a family 'you didn't know you even wanted'

Grez found out she was pregnant eight days before Hurricane Helene struck, while she was living in Asheville, North Carolina. Having a baby while her community was reeling from the devastation of the hurricane was stressful, she said.

Then, a week before her maternity leave was up, she found out she was getting laid off. Her partner put in a job transfer request to Maine, which came with a substantial pay raise.

"I suddenly found myself at home, which is great now because I get to be with (my son) all day, every day," she said. "So, we took my disadvantage as an advantage."

It's been an adjustment, she said. Sometimes she misses being able to shower or go to the bathroom in peace, or getting to go on spontaneous solo trips. And don't even get her started on the pain of childbirth, or what pregnancy has done to her body. Still, Grez said she would do it all over again.

"It's just such a short amount of time that you're absolutely miserable, and then you get this great family that you didn't know you even wanted or needed," she said. "And you were supposedly against your entire life."

Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

Reach Madeline at [email protected] and @maddiemitch_ on X.