May 4, 2026
Baby Boom! Cameron Diaz Welcomes Baby No. 3 at 53, Part Of A Growing Trend.
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RSS Feed Birthrates have been declining for years here in the U.S., but for those 45 and up they’re increasing by double digits. Actress Cameron Diaz and her husband, 47-year-old Benji Madden just announced the birth of their son, Nautus. The couple has been very private about the details of their growing family, but they are on a sizable list of notable, older parents. While some people may have negative comments about the impact to the child, many recent studies have found that having children later in life, thanks to modern technology, has increased health benefits for both the parents and the child.
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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Heylks. It is Monday, May fourth, and Cameron Diaz just had a baby at fifty three years old, So why can't we And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ or Parents to Be. I should say, why are you laughing? We talk about this some kind of Sometimes you think I'm joking about this, but I am moved to a moment. Some oftentimes I think, Wow, I wish you and I could have kids together. Cameron Diaz is showing us the way that's true.
00:00:35
Speaker 2: Having no, she's fifty three, I don't know, we don't know. I don't believe she was pregnant, but she had a baby. She welcomed a baby with her husband, Benji Madden, and it was their third child, So third child at fifty three. He's forty seven. I know she had her second child at fifty one and her first one in her late forties. But defying the odds in a lot of ways about what the expectations are around older women. You finally find the love of your life, you want to start a family with them, and a lot of women feel like they don't have options. But celebrities are proving more and more and more, and granted you usually have to have some means to be able to pull this off because it isn't something that ordinarily can happen naturally.
00:01:18
Speaker 3: Yes, it's possible, but.
00:01:20
Speaker 2: Extremely rare, so usually you do need some financial help, meaning donor eggs ivf assaragate even perhaps. But celebrities and women around the world are proving it is possible.
00:01:33
Speaker 1: Okay, we know it's possible. Is this going to be the direction things are going? As women, at least I keep hearing, continue to delay sometimes marriage or having kids because they want to do career first, so they want to do whatever. Is this the direction things are going to go?
00:01:54
Speaker 2: It appears so, and a lot of women in their twenties and thirties are making plans to give themselves more option by freezing their eggs and so, look, the whole issue is, and this is pretty remarkable when you see what a woman's body does. But you're born with millions of eggs and by the time you're forty, you have ten percent of those eggs left. So your fertility rates or your ability to get pregnant, drastically decrease after the age of thirty five, and that is why you're called Basically, it's a geriatric pregnancy basically if you are over the age of thirty five. But now we are seeing plenty of women at the age of forty and yes, fifty and beyond getting pregnant either with help. And is it possible to carry a child after menopause. Yes, it is with a donor egg, with some help from some drugs and hormones, and under the care of a physician.
00:02:50
Speaker 3: But it's remarkable. We do talk about it all the time.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: We have yes, joked about it, Yes, mentioned how wonderful it would be. And I've often said, yeah, if I was a little younger, or maybe before my cancer, all of this would have been something we would have seriously considered.
00:03:04
Speaker 3: But it is.
00:03:05
Speaker 2: It's inspirational because I think a lot of folks think, oh, that's selfish, the child will have a parent who's too old. But there are so many studies that have been done over the last several decades showing that that's not the case. That you have wiser, calmer, better parents, you have children who have better outcomes, higher IQs, even taller. I've seen all these studies where it's actually quite different than what people anticipated.
00:03:34
Speaker 1: Have you seen anything much of anything? I know you haven't gone that deep into it. But anything that starts to suggest a drumbeat of it's bad for the kid. Is there much of a negative that anyone suggests that you just reeled off some of the quick highlights and the positives. I mean, is anyone out there saying you should not have a child by the age after the age of blank because you're going to harm your child in some way?
00:04:02
Speaker 3: You know what I have to tell you. I was shocked. I saw almost only positive.
00:04:09
Speaker 2: Articles, positive statistics, encouragement, inspiration, and I really didn't see a lot of negativity. Now, granted, they do talk about in several of these articles, and a lot of women older women who are or have become the public face perhaps of being an older mom aka Jenna Jackson who had.
00:04:26
Speaker 3: A baby at the age of fifty.
00:04:28
Speaker 2: They have talked about how people will make comments or do judge them for being selfish. But it looks as though all of the material that people have looked at and studied for women who have been older, who have had children, it's all been positive.
00:04:42
Speaker 3: And maybe it's just yeah, yeah, it's public.
00:04:46
Speaker 2: It's formed opinion based on what we think is right or what we think you should do. But the truth is this is such a personal decision and it's based on your experience and your family and your dynamic and your partner and all the things that you're looking for and what you can provide that child. A young woman at the age of eighteen might be physically ready and at her height or prime to have a baby, but mentally financially, she might be the worst possible candidate to be a mom.
00:05:14
Speaker 1: No, that was you saw me there. It was an interesting way to put it. The only thing as far as pushback or criticism or of someone having it's just us judging others the people.
00:05:25
Speaker 3: That's exactly what it boils to other people. Okay, that is what I saw.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: But this is pretty interesting when you look at some of the statistics over the past decade, and we've seen this trend NonStop here in the United States. Birth rates have declined, they are declining, but the birth rate in people aged forty five to forty nine has risen by twelve percent, and it also has risen significantly in people fifty years and older.
00:05:50
Speaker 1: That's kind of cool.
00:05:51
Speaker 3: I think it is too.
00:05:53
Speaker 1: That says a lot, and I think that is a cool I don't know what the numbers will be later, but the idea that people are no recognizing that you have options later that you're not. I mean sometimes, Robes, we know people personally that we believe made bad decisions based on well, I gotta hurry up and get married because my clock is ticking. We know these folks, and plenty of folks are out there. Look, we're not judging anybody for that, but Rodes, I'm saying this takes away right that element of a woman's life in thinking I have to make this decision with this guy about this relationship because I want this other thinges that statistic is the most eye opening an encouraging thing I have heard so far by.
00:06:37
Speaker 3: The story, agreed.
00:06:38
Speaker 2: Look, the average age for menopause is fifty one, and most fertility experts, most doctors, will tell you that by the age of forty five, a woman's chance of getting pregnant naturally is almost zero. I mean, it's possible, but it's nearly miraculous.
00:06:55
Speaker 1: Can I ask you the next thing? This is what I forgot to ask, is the issue of a woman's age having a baby, the issue of getting pregnant or once you are pregnant by a certain age, there is a really high risk.
00:07:07
Speaker 3: I guess what is.
00:07:07
Speaker 1: The biggest issue there for women as the clock is ticking. Are they more freaked out I'm not going to be able to get pregnant, or if I do, i'm a high risk pregnancy.
00:07:15
Speaker 3: I think it's both.
00:07:16
Speaker 2: But the biggest issue is the amount of eggs you have left and the quality of those eggs. Okay, so you have a diminished quality of eggs. You have very few eggs left by the time you're forty, and then add it to fifty.
00:07:29
Speaker 3: So here's an idea. Birth. You have millions of eggs when you're born.
00:07:33
Speaker 2: By the time you reach puberty, it's about three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand. By the time you reach age thirty, it goes down to about one hundred thousand and thirty five.
00:07:42
Speaker 3: It starts rapidly declining to the point where at.
00:07:44
Speaker 2: Age forty you might only have five thousand eggs left, and by age fifty one you have less than a thousand. And the ones that are there, I don't know. It just the ones that are there aren't.
00:07:56
Speaker 3: The best quality.
00:07:57
Speaker 2: And that's why doctors suggest freezing eggs at twenty or thirty.
00:08:01
Speaker 3: When your eggs are in.
00:08:02
Speaker 2: Prime I guess prime ability to have the least amount of potential risks for any sort of birth effect.
00:08:10
Speaker 1: Sorry, baby, do you have any idea how many people freeze? Like when I hear Piman say I'm going to freeze my.
00:08:14
Speaker 3: Eggs, I don't know.
00:08:16
Speaker 2: I don't know how many they freeze. But it's a couple months process, and you go through certain hormones that they do to boost your egg production. They freeze those eggs, they make sure they're viable, they're in their good quality eggs, so to speak, and then you have that's the point in which you can implant those eggs, your own eggs. You can fertilize them, put them in your body, and they're your eggs, but they're the best version of you basically. So that's oftentimes what happens. And I remember hearing from again fertility specialist saying, if you hear of a woman who actually got pregnant and gave birth to their child over the age of fifty, pretty much anytime over the age of forty five, almost certainly, other than rare occasions, they were able to do so with a donor egg.
00:08:59
Speaker 3: And then for till the IVF treatments.
00:09:02
Speaker 1: And we don't know what happened with Cameron Diaz, and it should be known she has I mean, this is probably all we're going to get about the kid. They don't put their kids out there in public.
00:09:12
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty cool to each the room.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: But Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden have been very intentional in being extremely private about having kids and even just what that journey was like to have kids at her age.
00:09:28
Speaker 3: Benji actually put it out on Instagram.
00:09:29
Speaker 2: He made the announcement saying, Cameron and I are happy, excited and feeling so blessed to announce the birth of our third child, Noduce Nautas Madden.
00:09:38
Speaker 3: Welcome to the world. Son.
00:09:39
Speaker 2: So they have a daughter named Radix Wildflower and another son named Cardinal and so look, Cameron Diaz has talked a little bit just about being an older mom and the challenges, but saying that she needed to find the right person and she needed to be in the right place in her life.
00:09:55
Speaker 3: She's a happier mother.
00:09:56
Speaker 2: She can obviously financially take care of her children and she has the time not o to do so.
00:10:00
Speaker 3: She's been able to take a step.
00:10:01
Speaker 2: Back from her acting career and be able to focus on motherhood. And that's pretty damn cool because I know when I was juggling in I had my first Eva at twenty nine and my second Annalise at thirty three, I was in the throes of work, and through most of their formative years, I was working way more than I wish I had to.
00:10:22
Speaker 3: So I think it's cool and they'll.
00:10:23
Speaker 1: Give her credit. I mean, we know her name, We've never forgotten Cameron Dia as we never will. But she was not on our screens for a good chunk of time, and apparently that was intentional and good for her. She took this time out to spend those times with the kid. How old is the oldest?
00:10:41
Speaker 2: Six six, So she's fifty three, so you can do the math. Yes, she was forty seven when she had her first child.
00:10:48
Speaker 1: Have you seen anything out there? I haven't done a deep enough dive in which some are trying to anything, I mean, beyond the regular stuff you can expect online in each kind of way criticizing or trying to question her for having a child at fifty three.
00:11:05
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it yet.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: I'm sure if you go on to Reddit or you go on to X or you go on to whatever. I'm sure you can find someone throwing stones, not living in their glasshouse. But I liked some of what Cameron had to say about She gave a few quotes when she had her son at fifty one. She said, when you're my age and you decide to do it, it's a real choice.
00:11:27
Speaker 3: You really have to work hard for it.
00:11:29
Speaker 2: The only pressure for me is like I have to live to be one hundred and seven, you know, so no pressure. So she joked about the fact that she understands that she won't maybe be there for grandchildren in the way that a lot of other women who had children younger might, and.
00:11:45
Speaker 3: That's that's a choice.
00:11:46
Speaker 2: But I think it's a beautiful and amazing story to be able that technology exists, that there is a way for women who are older, who were able to focus on themselves maybe early on in their lives, to now be able to spend the second part of their lives focusing on children.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: That's kind of cool.
00:12:04
Speaker 1: No, I never thought about it that way. What an interesting potential motivator and keeping people to live longer if you're having kids at a later age, what a motivation at fifty three to stick around as long as possible for this new baby.
00:12:21
Speaker 3: Ain't that true?
00:12:22
Speaker 2: And there are articles written about that that they're actually seeing improved health benefits for women who have children later. However they do it, whether by the way, whether it's adopting children, whether it's having a surrogate, whether it's having a donor eg, whether it's having giving birth to your by yourself on your own, regardless if you choose to become a parent fifty plus, they actually say there are benefits to the parents men and women both because of what you just said. You have a reason, and it's intentional. This isn't a whoopsie, This isn't a oh no, what am I supposed to do now that I'm pregnant. This is a joyful, intentional, surpisful journey where you are actually focused on being the best parent you can, which actually has real benefits to you physically, emotionally, mentally as an adult growing older.
00:13:10
Speaker 1: And also when you're sixty you got to run around the playground. That might keep you active as well. Well.
00:13:16
Speaker 3: It does, it does. I think it's pretty cool, Like I really hadn't thought about this. Listen to this statistic.
00:13:22
Speaker 2: The number of women having their first baby when they are over thirty five has increased more than two hundred and seventy percent over the last four decades. That's huge, huge, Yes, And look, the point being I did mention it does tend to happen. You do tend to see these types of pregnancies and deliveries with women and people who have who have money. Basically, bottom line, it can cost as much as twenty five thousand to thirty thousand dollars just for an egg donation for a single IVF attempt. That doesn't include if you have to hire a sarrogate, if you you know there you're talking. It could be six figures to actually have a baby at a certain age, after a certain age.
00:14:07
Speaker 1: Okay, we don't know how she did this, but the options Okay, she could have been an anomaly, gotten pregnant, had a baby. That's not the case. We're suggesting suggesting she could have frozen an egg. I'm really walking through it. Camerd or what's someone that could have done. She could have frozen an egg earlier. That egg could have been implanted in her correct and she carried. Yes, that's an option, yes, or that same egg could have been.
00:14:34
Speaker 2: Implanted in a surrogate or most likely, most likely she had a donor EG. So she had a donor EG from a woman. And look, I have actually had several friends go through this process in their late forties early fifties, and it really kind of is an interesting thing, at least the way they've described it to me. You actually go through a book of baby pictures. They don't a lot of these women who donate their eggs don't want obviously their faces and their images and their names to be known for all parties included. So they actually have a baby picture of these women who are donor egg who give eggs, and you can see someone who looks a lot like you, and then you would in a lot of the cases, at least in my friends cases, you have then their husband's sperm. It fertilizes that donor egg with the baby picture that probably looks a lot like you, and you end up getting a baby and you get to know all of this woman's health history, etc.
00:15:24
Speaker 3: That looks like a version of you and your husband.
00:15:27
Speaker 1: To your point, yes, that's intentional.
00:15:30
Speaker 3: It is.
00:15:30
Speaker 1: Go through that process. You have so many times to say no and I refuse, and the checks you have to write and the contracts you have to sign. That is intentional and you for sure want that child. That's that's a big deal.
00:15:44
Speaker 2: It is a big deal. And look, you know I have just said, well, I guess I'll wait. I guess I'll wait for grandbabies, I'm probably will have to wait. Well, I hope at least five to ten years. But I think about my grandmother and my mother. My grandmother was made a grandmother at forty. That's like, it's so interesting to me because I've had the opposite experience from my family's perspective that my grandma had my dad at the age of twenty one, and my dad and my mom had me at the age of nineteen. So by the time she was forty, I was born. But I had my grandparents. I had all four grandparents up until a few years ago.
00:16:21
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful thing.
00:16:23
Speaker 2: But I also think if you're a woman and you're at a place in your life where you want to be a mom, it's just so cool that you can. So when we come back, we're going to talk about this long list of celebrities who had babies or brought children into their lives after the age of fifty. It's pretty remarkable. And we're going to talk about the oldest woman to ever give birth. I'm gonna have you guess, babe, how old do.
00:16:45
Speaker 3: You think she was?
00:16:49
Speaker 1: Fifty four?
00:16:51
Speaker 3: We'll have the answer when we come back.
00:17:02
Speaker 1: We continue here on Amy and TJ. Ropes hit me with a low Q and a quiz right before. So, I'm very curious to know you said the oldest woman to ever give birth for what some reason knew?
00:17:14
Speaker 3: What year was it?
00:17:15
Speaker 2: Twenty nineteen? Okay, sixty four, Okay, you're wrong, seventy four Okay. So in September of twenty nineteen, Aramadi Mangama. She was from India. She holds the world record for the oldest woman to give birth. She delivered twin girls. She had them implanted via IVF, but she gave She successfully grew them in her womb at the age of seventy four and gave birth to them and they're doing great.
00:17:45
Speaker 3: Donor x IVF. She wanted to have.
00:17:49
Speaker 1: A baby, she wanted dad.
00:17:51
Speaker 3: I don't know about the dad.
00:17:53
Speaker 2: I just know she delivered twin girls in September of twenty nineteen.
00:17:58
Speaker 3: Well a donor EG.
00:17:59
Speaker 1: But yes, she gave birthday the donor egg, but sperm from somebody she wanted.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't know the details of her personal life, but she could also have gotten a sperm donor.
00:18:09
Speaker 3: The point being is she.
00:18:11
Speaker 2: Was able to successfully carry and give birth to children at the age of seventy four.
00:18:18
Speaker 1: Not advisable, but it's.
00:18:20
Speaker 2: Doable, and it's just you know, that's a miracle. But I started looking at the number of celebrities who had babies after fifty.
00:18:26
Speaker 3: We remember the ones who were close to it.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: I think these are all Halle Berry was forty seven, Laura Lenny was forty nine, Kelly Preston was forty eight. Those were all, I think, pretty widely celebrated. But Janna Jackson, I remember she surprised everyone in twenty seventeen gave birth to her first child at the age of fifty, son Isa ALMANA.
00:18:50
Speaker 1: That's remarkable. I mean I don't remember that necessarily, what I do, I don't. I mean, what's the I mean, what were we supposed to say? I mean, it's anything short of celebrating it is nothing to be said, right.
00:19:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. Naomi Campbell was fifty when she announced in twenty twenty one that she had given birth to her daughter, Annie Leibovitz.
00:19:11
Speaker 3: I didn't know this, gave.
00:19:12
Speaker 2: Birth to her first child at fifty two, and then had twin girls via assarrogate four years later. So she had twin girls at fifty six. She used asaragate. But these are famous, powerful, wonderful women Hotocopy. Even here's someone after fifty. She adopted her daughters, Hailey, Joy and Hope Catherine at fifty two and at fifty six, so it's just about she started a family at the age of fifty two. I think a lot of women would think there wasn't an opportunity to do so. But Bridget Nielsen, you remember her fifty four years old, gave birth to her fifth child in twenty eighteen, So it just there are more women than I realized. At fifty four, gave birth to her fifth child, Kristin Davis from Sex and the City. She adopted her son at age fifty three, that she doesn't regret a moment for waiting until later to have her child, and I just think it's cool. I think it's awesome for women and for families who have the means and the time and the desire to be able to show a child love, bring them up, and it's not this horror story that we hear about that these children are neglected or that their parents die earlier, that somehow this is a bad or a negative thing. In fact, I'm seeing nothing but positivity, and it's just cool to see Cameron Diaz and her husband Benji be able to grow their family even at the ages that they are.
00:20:35
Speaker 1: I mean, have means in time, but it's I think I just love the story that it's giving folks options and it's showing again it doesn't have to go a certain way, or a family doesn't have to look a certain way, the parents don't have to be a certain age, and we don't even have to have sex to.
00:20:52
Speaker 3: Have this baby.
00:20:53
Speaker 1: No, I mean, all those things are just technology is catching up. People are catching up, and I just think it's a nice drop in the bucket of an evolving family in America. I love that she said as much as she had about it, but I love this firm.
00:21:11
Speaker 3: Yes, congratulations for them.
00:21:12
Speaker 1: I should say, I'm just as more familiar with her, so I'm sorry, yes, but I'm happy for them.
00:21:19
Speaker 2: Cameron Diaz, Benji Madden, congratulation on baby number three, and hey, this guy's the limit whenever, whenever you're ready. It seems like science is waiting for you. So this is a cool story just wanted to share with you and without everyone. Thank you for listening to us. I'm Amy Roebuck alongside TJ.
00:21:36
Speaker 3: Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Heylks. It is Monday, May fourth, and Cameron Diaz just had a baby at fifty three years old, So why can't we And with that, welcome to this episode of Amy and TJ or Parents to Be. I should say, why are you laughing? We talk about this some kind of Sometimes you think I'm joking about this, but I am moved to a moment. Some oftentimes I think, Wow, I wish you and I could have kids together. Cameron Diaz is showing us the way that's true.
00:00:35
Speaker 2: Having no, she's fifty three, I don't know, we don't know. I don't believe she was pregnant, but she had a baby. She welcomed a baby with her husband, Benji Madden, and it was their third child, So third child at fifty three. He's forty seven. I know she had her second child at fifty one and her first one in her late forties. But defying the odds in a lot of ways about what the expectations are around older women. You finally find the love of your life, you want to start a family with them, and a lot of women feel like they don't have options. But celebrities are proving more and more and more, and granted you usually have to have some means to be able to pull this off because it isn't something that ordinarily can happen naturally.
00:01:18
Speaker 3: Yes, it's possible, but.
00:01:20
Speaker 2: Extremely rare, so usually you do need some financial help, meaning donor eggs ivf assaragate even perhaps. But celebrities and women around the world are proving it is possible.
00:01:33
Speaker 1: Okay, we know it's possible. Is this going to be the direction things are going? As women, at least I keep hearing, continue to delay sometimes marriage or having kids because they want to do career first, so they want to do whatever. Is this the direction things are going to go?
00:01:54
Speaker 2: It appears so, and a lot of women in their twenties and thirties are making plans to give themselves more option by freezing their eggs and so, look, the whole issue is, and this is pretty remarkable when you see what a woman's body does. But you're born with millions of eggs and by the time you're forty, you have ten percent of those eggs left. So your fertility rates or your ability to get pregnant, drastically decrease after the age of thirty five, and that is why you're called Basically, it's a geriatric pregnancy basically if you are over the age of thirty five. But now we are seeing plenty of women at the age of forty and yes, fifty and beyond getting pregnant either with help. And is it possible to carry a child after menopause. Yes, it is with a donor egg, with some help from some drugs and hormones, and under the care of a physician.
00:02:50
Speaker 3: But it's remarkable. We do talk about it all the time.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: We have yes, joked about it, Yes, mentioned how wonderful it would be. And I've often said, yeah, if I was a little younger, or maybe before my cancer, all of this would have been something we would have seriously considered.
00:03:04
Speaker 3: But it is.
00:03:05
Speaker 2: It's inspirational because I think a lot of folks think, oh, that's selfish, the child will have a parent who's too old. But there are so many studies that have been done over the last several decades showing that that's not the case. That you have wiser, calmer, better parents, you have children who have better outcomes, higher IQs, even taller. I've seen all these studies where it's actually quite different than what people anticipated.
00:03:34
Speaker 1: Have you seen anything much of anything? I know you haven't gone that deep into it. But anything that starts to suggest a drumbeat of it's bad for the kid. Is there much of a negative that anyone suggests that you just reeled off some of the quick highlights and the positives. I mean, is anyone out there saying you should not have a child by the age after the age of blank because you're going to harm your child in some way?
00:04:02
Speaker 3: You know what I have to tell you. I was shocked. I saw almost only positive.
00:04:09
Speaker 2: Articles, positive statistics, encouragement, inspiration, and I really didn't see a lot of negativity. Now, granted, they do talk about in several of these articles, and a lot of women older women who are or have become the public face perhaps of being an older mom aka Jenna Jackson who had.
00:04:26
Speaker 3: A baby at the age of fifty.
00:04:28
Speaker 2: They have talked about how people will make comments or do judge them for being selfish. But it looks as though all of the material that people have looked at and studied for women who have been older, who have had children, it's all been positive.
00:04:42
Speaker 3: And maybe it's just yeah, yeah, it's public.
00:04:46
Speaker 2: It's formed opinion based on what we think is right or what we think you should do. But the truth is this is such a personal decision and it's based on your experience and your family and your dynamic and your partner and all the things that you're looking for and what you can provide that child. A young woman at the age of eighteen might be physically ready and at her height or prime to have a baby, but mentally financially, she might be the worst possible candidate to be a mom.
00:05:14
Speaker 1: No, that was you saw me there. It was an interesting way to put it. The only thing as far as pushback or criticism or of someone having it's just us judging others the people.
00:05:25
Speaker 3: That's exactly what it boils to other people. Okay, that is what I saw.
00:05:30
Speaker 2: But this is pretty interesting when you look at some of the statistics over the past decade, and we've seen this trend NonStop here in the United States. Birth rates have declined, they are declining, but the birth rate in people aged forty five to forty nine has risen by twelve percent, and it also has risen significantly in people fifty years and older.
00:05:50
Speaker 1: That's kind of cool.
00:05:51
Speaker 3: I think it is too.
00:05:53
Speaker 1: That says a lot, and I think that is a cool I don't know what the numbers will be later, but the idea that people are no recognizing that you have options later that you're not. I mean sometimes, Robes, we know people personally that we believe made bad decisions based on well, I gotta hurry up and get married because my clock is ticking. We know these folks, and plenty of folks are out there. Look, we're not judging anybody for that, but Rodes, I'm saying this takes away right that element of a woman's life in thinking I have to make this decision with this guy about this relationship because I want this other thinges that statistic is the most eye opening an encouraging thing I have heard so far by.
00:06:37
Speaker 3: The story, agreed.
00:06:38
Speaker 2: Look, the average age for menopause is fifty one, and most fertility experts, most doctors, will tell you that by the age of forty five, a woman's chance of getting pregnant naturally is almost zero. I mean, it's possible, but it's nearly miraculous.
00:06:55
Speaker 1: Can I ask you the next thing? This is what I forgot to ask, is the issue of a woman's age having a baby, the issue of getting pregnant or once you are pregnant by a certain age, there is a really high risk.
00:07:07
Speaker 3: I guess what is.
00:07:07
Speaker 1: The biggest issue there for women as the clock is ticking. Are they more freaked out I'm not going to be able to get pregnant, or if I do, i'm a high risk pregnancy.
00:07:15
Speaker 3: I think it's both.
00:07:16
Speaker 2: But the biggest issue is the amount of eggs you have left and the quality of those eggs. Okay, so you have a diminished quality of eggs. You have very few eggs left by the time you're forty, and then add it to fifty.
00:07:29
Speaker 3: So here's an idea. Birth. You have millions of eggs when you're born.
00:07:33
Speaker 2: By the time you reach puberty, it's about three hundred thousand to four hundred thousand. By the time you reach age thirty, it goes down to about one hundred thousand and thirty five.
00:07:42
Speaker 3: It starts rapidly declining to the point where at.
00:07:44
Speaker 2: Age forty you might only have five thousand eggs left, and by age fifty one you have less than a thousand. And the ones that are there, I don't know. It just the ones that are there aren't.
00:07:56
Speaker 3: The best quality.
00:07:57
Speaker 2: And that's why doctors suggest freezing eggs at twenty or thirty.
00:08:01
Speaker 3: When your eggs are in.
00:08:02
Speaker 2: Prime I guess prime ability to have the least amount of potential risks for any sort of birth effect.
00:08:10
Speaker 1: Sorry, baby, do you have any idea how many people freeze? Like when I hear Piman say I'm going to freeze my.
00:08:14
Speaker 3: Eggs, I don't know.
00:08:16
Speaker 2: I don't know how many they freeze. But it's a couple months process, and you go through certain hormones that they do to boost your egg production. They freeze those eggs, they make sure they're viable, they're in their good quality eggs, so to speak, and then you have that's the point in which you can implant those eggs, your own eggs. You can fertilize them, put them in your body, and they're your eggs, but they're the best version of you basically. So that's oftentimes what happens. And I remember hearing from again fertility specialist saying, if you hear of a woman who actually got pregnant and gave birth to their child over the age of fifty, pretty much anytime over the age of forty five, almost certainly, other than rare occasions, they were able to do so with a donor egg.
00:08:59
Speaker 3: And then for till the IVF treatments.
00:09:02
Speaker 1: And we don't know what happened with Cameron Diaz, and it should be known she has I mean, this is probably all we're going to get about the kid. They don't put their kids out there in public.
00:09:12
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty cool to each the room.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: But Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden have been very intentional in being extremely private about having kids and even just what that journey was like to have kids at her age.
00:09:28
Speaker 3: Benji actually put it out on Instagram.
00:09:29
Speaker 2: He made the announcement saying, Cameron and I are happy, excited and feeling so blessed to announce the birth of our third child, Noduce Nautas Madden.
00:09:38
Speaker 3: Welcome to the world. Son.
00:09:39
Speaker 2: So they have a daughter named Radix Wildflower and another son named Cardinal and so look, Cameron Diaz has talked a little bit just about being an older mom and the challenges, but saying that she needed to find the right person and she needed to be in the right place in her life.
00:09:55
Speaker 3: She's a happier mother.
00:09:56
Speaker 2: She can obviously financially take care of her children and she has the time not o to do so.
00:10:00
Speaker 3: She's been able to take a step.
00:10:01
Speaker 2: Back from her acting career and be able to focus on motherhood. And that's pretty damn cool because I know when I was juggling in I had my first Eva at twenty nine and my second Annalise at thirty three, I was in the throes of work, and through most of their formative years, I was working way more than I wish I had to.
00:10:22
Speaker 3: So I think it's cool and they'll.
00:10:23
Speaker 1: Give her credit. I mean, we know her name, We've never forgotten Cameron Dia as we never will. But she was not on our screens for a good chunk of time, and apparently that was intentional and good for her. She took this time out to spend those times with the kid. How old is the oldest?
00:10:41
Speaker 2: Six six, So she's fifty three, so you can do the math. Yes, she was forty seven when she had her first child.
00:10:48
Speaker 1: Have you seen anything out there? I haven't done a deep enough dive in which some are trying to anything, I mean, beyond the regular stuff you can expect online in each kind of way criticizing or trying to question her for having a child at fifty three.
00:11:05
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it yet.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: I'm sure if you go on to Reddit or you go on to X or you go on to whatever. I'm sure you can find someone throwing stones, not living in their glasshouse. But I liked some of what Cameron had to say about She gave a few quotes when she had her son at fifty one. She said, when you're my age and you decide to do it, it's a real choice.
00:11:27
Speaker 3: You really have to work hard for it.
00:11:29
Speaker 2: The only pressure for me is like I have to live to be one hundred and seven, you know, so no pressure. So she joked about the fact that she understands that she won't maybe be there for grandchildren in the way that a lot of other women who had children younger might, and.
00:11:45
Speaker 3: That's that's a choice.
00:11:46
Speaker 2: But I think it's a beautiful and amazing story to be able that technology exists, that there is a way for women who are older, who were able to focus on themselves maybe early on in their lives, to now be able to spend the second part of their lives focusing on children.
00:12:03
Speaker 3: That's kind of cool.
00:12:04
Speaker 1: No, I never thought about it that way. What an interesting potential motivator and keeping people to live longer if you're having kids at a later age, what a motivation at fifty three to stick around as long as possible for this new baby.
00:12:21
Speaker 3: Ain't that true?
00:12:22
Speaker 2: And there are articles written about that that they're actually seeing improved health benefits for women who have children later. However they do it, whether by the way, whether it's adopting children, whether it's having a surrogate, whether it's having a donor eg, whether it's having giving birth to your by yourself on your own, regardless if you choose to become a parent fifty plus, they actually say there are benefits to the parents men and women both because of what you just said. You have a reason, and it's intentional. This isn't a whoopsie, This isn't a oh no, what am I supposed to do now that I'm pregnant. This is a joyful, intentional, surpisful journey where you are actually focused on being the best parent you can, which actually has real benefits to you physically, emotionally, mentally as an adult growing older.
00:13:10
Speaker 1: And also when you're sixty you got to run around the playground. That might keep you active as well. Well.
00:13:16
Speaker 3: It does, it does. I think it's pretty cool, Like I really hadn't thought about this. Listen to this statistic.
00:13:22
Speaker 2: The number of women having their first baby when they are over thirty five has increased more than two hundred and seventy percent over the last four decades. That's huge, huge, Yes, And look, the point being I did mention it does tend to happen. You do tend to see these types of pregnancies and deliveries with women and people who have who have money. Basically, bottom line, it can cost as much as twenty five thousand to thirty thousand dollars just for an egg donation for a single IVF attempt. That doesn't include if you have to hire a sarrogate, if you you know there you're talking. It could be six figures to actually have a baby at a certain age, after a certain age.
00:14:07
Speaker 1: Okay, we don't know how she did this, but the options Okay, she could have been an anomaly, gotten pregnant, had a baby. That's not the case. We're suggesting suggesting she could have frozen an egg. I'm really walking through it. Camerd or what's someone that could have done. She could have frozen an egg earlier. That egg could have been implanted in her correct and she carried. Yes, that's an option, yes, or that same egg could have been.
00:14:34
Speaker 2: Implanted in a surrogate or most likely, most likely she had a donor EG. So she had a donor EG from a woman. And look, I have actually had several friends go through this process in their late forties early fifties, and it really kind of is an interesting thing, at least the way they've described it to me. You actually go through a book of baby pictures. They don't a lot of these women who donate their eggs don't want obviously their faces and their images and their names to be known for all parties included. So they actually have a baby picture of these women who are donor egg who give eggs, and you can see someone who looks a lot like you, and then you would in a lot of the cases, at least in my friends cases, you have then their husband's sperm. It fertilizes that donor egg with the baby picture that probably looks a lot like you, and you end up getting a baby and you get to know all of this woman's health history, etc.
00:15:24
Speaker 3: That looks like a version of you and your husband.
00:15:27
Speaker 1: To your point, yes, that's intentional.
00:15:30
Speaker 3: It is.
00:15:30
Speaker 1: Go through that process. You have so many times to say no and I refuse, and the checks you have to write and the contracts you have to sign. That is intentional and you for sure want that child. That's that's a big deal.
00:15:44
Speaker 2: It is a big deal. And look, you know I have just said, well, I guess I'll wait. I guess I'll wait for grandbabies, I'm probably will have to wait. Well, I hope at least five to ten years. But I think about my grandmother and my mother. My grandmother was made a grandmother at forty. That's like, it's so interesting to me because I've had the opposite experience from my family's perspective that my grandma had my dad at the age of twenty one, and my dad and my mom had me at the age of nineteen. So by the time she was forty, I was born. But I had my grandparents. I had all four grandparents up until a few years ago.
00:16:21
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful thing.
00:16:23
Speaker 2: But I also think if you're a woman and you're at a place in your life where you want to be a mom, it's just so cool that you can. So when we come back, we're going to talk about this long list of celebrities who had babies or brought children into their lives after the age of fifty. It's pretty remarkable. And we're going to talk about the oldest woman to ever give birth. I'm gonna have you guess, babe, how old do.
00:16:45
Speaker 3: You think she was?
00:16:49
Speaker 1: Fifty four?
00:16:51
Speaker 3: We'll have the answer when we come back.
00:17:02
Speaker 1: We continue here on Amy and TJ. Ropes hit me with a low Q and a quiz right before. So, I'm very curious to know you said the oldest woman to ever give birth for what some reason knew?
00:17:14
Speaker 3: What year was it?
00:17:15
Speaker 2: Twenty nineteen? Okay, sixty four, Okay, you're wrong, seventy four Okay. So in September of twenty nineteen, Aramadi Mangama. She was from India. She holds the world record for the oldest woman to give birth. She delivered twin girls. She had them implanted via IVF, but she gave She successfully grew them in her womb at the age of seventy four and gave birth to them and they're doing great.
00:17:45
Speaker 3: Donor x IVF. She wanted to have.
00:17:49
Speaker 1: A baby, she wanted dad.
00:17:51
Speaker 3: I don't know about the dad.
00:17:53
Speaker 2: I just know she delivered twin girls in September of twenty nineteen.
00:17:58
Speaker 3: Well a donor EG.
00:17:59
Speaker 1: But yes, she gave birthday the donor egg, but sperm from somebody she wanted.
00:18:05
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't know the details of her personal life, but she could also have gotten a sperm donor.
00:18:09
Speaker 3: The point being is she.
00:18:11
Speaker 2: Was able to successfully carry and give birth to children at the age of seventy four.
00:18:18
Speaker 1: Not advisable, but it's.
00:18:20
Speaker 2: Doable, and it's just you know, that's a miracle. But I started looking at the number of celebrities who had babies after fifty.
00:18:26
Speaker 3: We remember the ones who were close to it.
00:18:28
Speaker 2: I think these are all Halle Berry was forty seven, Laura Lenny was forty nine, Kelly Preston was forty eight. Those were all, I think, pretty widely celebrated. But Janna Jackson, I remember she surprised everyone in twenty seventeen gave birth to her first child at the age of fifty, son Isa ALMANA.
00:18:50
Speaker 1: That's remarkable. I mean I don't remember that necessarily, what I do, I don't. I mean, what's the I mean, what were we supposed to say? I mean, it's anything short of celebrating it is nothing to be said, right.
00:19:03
Speaker 2: Yeah. Naomi Campbell was fifty when she announced in twenty twenty one that she had given birth to her daughter, Annie Leibovitz.
00:19:11
Speaker 3: I didn't know this, gave.
00:19:12
Speaker 2: Birth to her first child at fifty two, and then had twin girls via assarrogate four years later. So she had twin girls at fifty six. She used asaragate. But these are famous, powerful, wonderful women Hotocopy. Even here's someone after fifty. She adopted her daughters, Hailey, Joy and Hope Catherine at fifty two and at fifty six, so it's just about she started a family at the age of fifty two. I think a lot of women would think there wasn't an opportunity to do so. But Bridget Nielsen, you remember her fifty four years old, gave birth to her fifth child in twenty eighteen, So it just there are more women than I realized. At fifty four, gave birth to her fifth child, Kristin Davis from Sex and the City. She adopted her son at age fifty three, that she doesn't regret a moment for waiting until later to have her child, and I just think it's cool. I think it's awesome for women and for families who have the means and the time and the desire to be able to show a child love, bring them up, and it's not this horror story that we hear about that these children are neglected or that their parents die earlier, that somehow this is a bad or a negative thing. In fact, I'm seeing nothing but positivity, and it's just cool to see Cameron Diaz and her husband Benji be able to grow their family even at the ages that they are.
00:20:35
Speaker 1: I mean, have means in time, but it's I think I just love the story that it's giving folks options and it's showing again it doesn't have to go a certain way, or a family doesn't have to look a certain way, the parents don't have to be a certain age, and we don't even have to have sex to.
00:20:52
Speaker 3: Have this baby.
00:20:53
Speaker 1: No, I mean, all those things are just technology is catching up. People are catching up, and I just think it's a nice drop in the bucket of an evolving family in America. I love that she said as much as she had about it, but I love this firm.
00:21:11
Speaker 3: Yes, congratulations for them.
00:21:12
Speaker 1: I should say, I'm just as more familiar with her, so I'm sorry, yes, but I'm happy for them.
00:21:19
Speaker 2: Cameron Diaz, Benji Madden, congratulation on baby number three, and hey, this guy's the limit whenever, whenever you're ready. It seems like science is waiting for you. So this is a cool story just wanted to share with you and without everyone. Thank you for listening to us. I'm Amy Roebuck alongside TJ.
00:21:36
Speaker 3: Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.