What"s it actually like to have your first youngster in your 50s?

Many congratulations to Laura Wade Gery, head of multi-channel at M&S, and her husband, Simon Roberts, 67, on the news that they are about to become parents for the first time.

That we are even discussing this happy fact is not just because her forthcoming maternity leave was announced on the stock exchange, but because Ms Wade Gery is 50 years-old.

If a man of the same age were to be taking paternity leave, few would raise an eyebrow, but older mothers are still the stuff of debate – even though the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show one in 25 babies are now born to those over 40; a four-fold increase in the past 30 years.

Our idealized image of mothers may have been forged by young maidens from the Virgin Mary to Duchess of Cambridge but, of course, late motherhood is nothing new. The contemporary twist is that a growing number of women are now starting (rather than making surprise additions to) their families long after peak fertility has waned.

In my case, I had always assumed that I would have a family but I was injured in a car crash in 1994, when I was 33, and spent years recovering from a head injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, only compounded by the death of my father in 1996.

Naomi Gryn gave birth to her daughter, Sadie, when she was 51

I was in my early 40s before I met Peter, the first man with whom I could imagine sharing a family, and it then took several more years for us to make that happen, with two miscarriages and four failed attempts at IVF along the way.

The last was the month before my 51st birthday – the cut-off age at the fertility clinic in Barcelona we had been using. With two remaining embryos in their freezer, the clinic extended the deadline by which I could have them implanted by three months.

I had made peace with childlessness on so many occasions before, that I don’t know what compelled me to go back to Spain for one last roll of the dice. Perhaps it was my late father’s maxim that you can’t live without hope.

People’s reactions to the news I was about to become a mother at 51 were mixed. My own mother seemed apprehensive at first – although an active octogenarian, perhaps she was anxious about how much energy either of us would have to handle a new arrival.

My sister-in-law, Jane cried with happiness. In the event, having a child in my 50s has been nothing but cause for great joy.

I didn’t tune into NCT when I was pregnant – partly because I was stretched across several jobs at the time and partly because I thought I might feel freakishly old. But the mothers I meet in my corner of London are often not that much younger than me – and I clearly don’t act my age as they always seem surprised to learn that I’m in my mid-50s.

Many people suppose that it must be much more tiring to have a baby in middle age. As I don’t know what it feels like to be running after a boisterous toddler in your 20s or 30s, I have nothing to compare it to, but all the mothers in the playground look exhausted, whatever their age.

For me, the only eyebrow-raising element of Laura’s news is that she is planning to take only four months’ maternity leave. As a freelance writer and filmmaker, I was not entitled to any at all – although I told one producer for whom I’d been working in the weeks leading up to Sadie’s arrival that I expected to be back in action by December.

How naive. I hadn’t really taken on board how having a child would turn mine and my partner’s world so completely inside out. Three years later, I’m still a stay-at-home mum.

Sadie goes to nursery school two mornings a week, but six hours is hardly enough time to achieve anything noteworthy and even if she dropped her afternoon nap, 9am till 3.30pm rarely counts as a full day in the working world.

In my new role, it’s a problem when Sadie leaves her newly acquired magic wand at a café, a disaster when I’m supposed to meet a deadline on a day when she wakes up with a high fever, and catastrophic when the brakes on her pushchair collapse on the eve of our going away on holiday.

We have to include Sadie’s invisible friend, Yoggish, on family outings, spending our evenings Googling remedies for crayon on the wall (mayonnaise) instead of going to the movies, and question whether Sadie will ever show an interest in potty training.

Diane Keaton adopted her two children at the age of 51 and 55

These have been, however, the sweetest years of my life, each and every day filled with unexpected moments of pure wonder. I took Sadie to see my father’s grave this week, to mark the anniversary of his death. She insisted on wearing her sparkly pink dress because, she said, “it will cheer him up”.

I wish I could have cloned myself so that I might have had both my pre-Sadie life and the family life I am relishing now.

Of course part of me regrets that I didn’t have Sadie at a much younger age – not just because the likelihood of my succumbing to some ghastly age-related disease increases with every passing year (thank goodness Pete is eight years younger) but also because I would have so much liked to have had her company for the journey.

Many of my friends have not had children. For some, it was a conscious decision, but mostly that is just how things have panned out and I am aware as I write these words how childlessness can be the source of terrible pain.

Being childfree, however, can of course be fun. Women such as Laura Wade Gery and me know that we have been immensely fortunate to enjoy, for so long, carefree attractions such as dashing to the theatre because someone has a spare ticket or leaping at a job that entails travel and long hours.

That may make me an even happier mother now, than I might have been earlier: I’ve already seen much of the world and done a lot of partying, and though I have always loved working, younger mothers seem more concerned than me about losing their foothold on the career ladder.

When Mimi, the 20-something daughter of a friend complimented me recently on being a good role model as an older mother, I was appalled. “Please try not to leave it as late as I did,” I pleaded.

But for Mimi, now taking her first steps in the working world, reluctant to have her wings clipped so soon after emerging from school and university, and manacled by student debt, even if she were to meet her perfect match tomorrow, owning a family-sized home is more of a mirage than a distant dream.

Companies such as Apple and Facebook have now started offering to pay for female employees of Mimi’s age to freeze their eggs. Although this might sound like a generous provision, in reality the odds of a frozen egg resulting in a live birth are still very poor and, besides, the message that this is putting across is that women can’t – or shouldn’t try – to combine family and work concurrently.

So we should all be cheering when a high-flying corporate executive is willing to embrace family life, whatever his or her age. Far more worrisome is the fact that women should, in the first place, have to continue to choose between having children or realizing their true potential in the working world.

The real issue we should be debating is whether Laura would have got as far as she has in the corporate world if she had been juggling young children with a hectic working schedule along the way.

But if Laura WG can cope with the job she does, she clearly has the sort of stamina needed to cope with the demands of a young child. And judging by her track record, she will gladly embrace the adventure ahead.

What"s it actually like to have your first youngster in your 50s?