How to be a mother in your 40s In my twenties or thirties, I would have worried about having the trendy clothes and latest toys, and would have been more susceptible to all the marketing around babies and children. But at my age, I don't worry about that at all. I earn less money now than I have probably ever done, but I'm happy. But what's also great is that a lot of my friends have already had their children, so I get their hand-me-downs. Being an older mother has meant I've had the confidence to do other things as I raise Hope. When I was pregnant, I started a blog because my friends kept asking how I was doing. It was a way of keeping them up to date with everything. Had I been a younger mum, I don't think I would have had the capacity to take that on. After Hope was born, I started writing a book about breastfeeding, which will be published next year. Again, had I been younger, I doubt I would have had the confidence in my opinions and ideas to do it. Teresa Greenhalgh, 45 Mother of nine-month-old daughter, Adelaide I remember dreading going to my first antenatal class and mother-and-baby group because I was worried about being mistaken for a grandmother. Actually, everyone was wonderful, and no one said anything about my age. People are far more interested in how old your baby is than how old you are. The fear of such things is far worse than the reality. As an older mother, you have to be prepared to be the one who finds it harder to get up off the floor after sitting and playing for two hours. And that dancing around, doing all the songs, can be more tiring, but it's also a question of attitude. Accept that you are going to feel tired and find some things harder than younger mums. There are upsides to being an older parent. I am far less panicky than some younger mothers I know. When it comes to weaning, some are terrified of their babies choking on solids. Me, I'm happy to keep an eye as she eats a mushed-up sandwich. What's the worst that could happen? Rachel Halliwell, 45 Mother of two teenage daughters and, more recently, eight-year-old Bridie The other day, my husband listened, aghast, as I ordered our eight-year-old a processed-ham sandwich on white bread for her café lunch. "You'd never have allowed the older girls to eat junk like that," he said, referring to our 16- and 19-year-old daughters. I pointed out how young and naive I was back then, when I first became a mother in my twenties. Then, I thought keeping your kids away from chicken nuggets and fizzy drinks was the definition of good parenting. But now, aged 45, I know that you can feed your little darlings as much organic broccoli and multigrain bread as you like: when they hit their teens, they'll still decide it's a great idea to take a fake ID out clubbing, while you take yourself off to bed convinced that they're over at their mate's house. Motherhood in your forties may be physically exhausting, but mentally you are so well equipped for it. I hand out parenting advice all the time to the other mums at the primary-school gates. It's generally unsolicited, so probably quite annoying, but with almost two decades on the age of some of the other mothers standing there, I feel duty-bound to share. Being "mummy" to a little one in my forties wasn't part of my life plan: by 29, I'd had two daughters and felt my family was complete. But then the little surprise we called Bridie came along and I found myself doing it all over again, at an age when I no longer had the energy or inclination to be a textbook "good mother." And it's all working out just fine. Being relaxed about bedtimes, diet and screen time has produced a child at least as happy, academic and healthy as her sisters ever were. Interestingly, Bridie's best friend's mum is the same age as me; we seem to have a similarly laid-back approach. Like me, she also finds one of the hardest things about being an older mother is finding the energy to be "fun" - playing the clown and clambering over playground equipment with them. "Poor Bridie," our older girls say when they walk into our living room on a Saturday night and see we're all watching Strictly when they know Bridie's mates will be watching The X Factor. "It's your fault that she won't know what they're all talking about in the playground on Monday," they scold. They also think it's cruel that Bridie has seen the inside of more National Trust properties than soft-play centres. She has spent so much time in coffee shops, she once asked for a babyccino in McDonald's! But if those are the worst things that having older parents means she must endure, I'm not too worried. Because, above everything else, Bridie knows that however decrepit her mother may be, I love her to bits. And whether you become a mum at 20 or 40, that really is the best gauge of all. Lisa Barley Jones, 43 Has a two-year-old son, Henry, and daughter, Martha, four months For six-and-a-half years, my husband and I tried to have children, without success. My 40th birthday felt like a real turning point, like time was running out and that it was never going to happen. I finally got pregnant on our 11th attempt at IVF. I was probably the oldest mother at the National Childbirth Trust antenatal classes by a good 10 years, but at the mother-and-baby groups, age seemed to matter less. A lot of the mothers there were in their mid- to late-thirties, so I didn't seem so different from them. One of the greatest things about being a midlife mother is that I now have a group of friends who are in their twenties. But I also have older friends who've gone through it before and can help out. Those who had children years ago love seeing my children's baby and toddler phases again. It's brought us closer together as a group. When it comes to the children, I've definitely got more empathy and patience than I would have had in my twenties and thirties. It doesn't matter what age you are - if you're having sleepless nights, it's tough. But if you've waited this long for children, you cherish every sleepless night, every dirty nappy - you don't take anything for granted. My parents, who are in their seventies, say the children have given them a new lease of life. That, for me, is a real joy. Melanie McDonagh, 51 'Midlife mother' of two Hamlet, for once, got it right: there's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. It's not a problem to have children when you're 40, as I did, unless you make it a problem. My son is now 11, my daughter eight, and I can't think of any obvious ways we're worse off on account of my being older when I had them. Mind you, it helps if other mothers at your children's school are roughly your age, and in ours, many are. Certainly, I know one father who is older than me; he seems unperturbed. Consider the advantages. You're a veteran of the working environment, so you're not going to get agitated by tantrums and temper. You're glad to have the children, or at least you should be. You may still have a job you enjoy, which means that you can escape the hurly-burly of home life to the deep, deep peace of the office. You're less likely to give a toss what anyone else thinks. Having said that, it would, I think, be a mistake deliberately to postpone having children until you're 40 - you'd be nuts to assume it's going to happen - but in my case, that's simply how things turned out; I married late. But then I'd never have contemplated IVF. One friend deliberately postponed having children until her late thirties only to find out that she was prematurely menopausal. Putting career ahead of having children suggests, as Kate Silverton said last week, skewed priorities. But then, with the advantage of experience, you don't see things as "either/or" so much as "both/and." Children are good fun whatever age you have them. The only disadvantage to being older is that they keep asking what life was like "in the olden days." Ever felt like a Victorian?