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Seven years ago, I was at my local antenatal class preparing for the birth of my firstborn. In my forties and armed with a coloured birthing ball, I looked around and gasped. All the other soon-to-be-mums were at least a decade younger than me. Some were nearly half my age. It briefly panicked me. Would I make any friends? Why did I leave it so late to have kids? Was I doing something wrong? In hindsight, though, I had no reason to worry: your forties is absolutely the best decade in which to have your first child. According to data published last week in The Daily Telegraph, the number of women becoming first-time mothers in their forties has increased in recent years: today, one in 25 UK births is to a woman aged 40-plus. That’s a lot of women just like me, despite the fact that getting pregnant over 35 gets you labelled as someone of “advanced maternal age”. That might sound harsh until you remember that older pregnancies used to be termed “geriatric” – thank God that’s been phased out. I’ve never regretted waiting until my forties, even if I had been trying for children for years by that point. My story is undeniably unique: my partner Alex took his own life while we were doing IVF, but that didn’t stop me from continuing to try to get pregnant. The maternal call was strong, so I decided to carry on with the process using Alex’s frozen sperm. Today I have two beautiful daughters with him: Lola, seven, and Liberty, five. It is an understatement to say I was ready for a baby at 40. I was grounded. Confident. Unlike when I was in my twenties or thirties, I knew exactly who I was and what made me tick. I had life experience. I no longer got FOMO. I didn’t even drink, having been through hell and back to become sober 20 years earlier. My career was fully off the ground, and therapy had helped me identify the family dysfunction I knew to ditch for the sake of my kids. I also wasn’t worried about my body bouncing back after the birth. I just desperately wanted to be a mum. Of course, there are all sorts of advantages to having children in your twenties and thirties. A huge bonus is that you’re simply more fertile. According to research, 31 is the magic age to have a baby – you’re still as fertile as in your twenties, but you also have more money. I’m sure motherhood in your fifties is great, too – although using your own eggs is highly unlikely, unless you froze them at some point before you turned 35. It means that some older mums often turn to donor eggs. Thinking back on my twenties and thirties, I don’t know how I would have managed motherhood. I don’t think I was ready to put my own needs on hold. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to juggle work and my children, especially with the spiralling costs of childcare. I do accept that there are greater risks inherent in waiting to have kids. Both the quantity and quality of eggs dwindle. The rates of failed fertilisation, miscarriage and birth defects rise with age. There’s also the social pressure that comes with not having children early – you’re forced into endless conversations about the “ticking timebomb” of your fertility, and expected to fend off probing inquiries about your biological clock. The British Fertility Society advises women to start trying for a baby by the age of 32 at the latest, for a 90 per cent guarantee of having a child without resorting to IVF. But this advice simply wouldn’t have worked for me – I was determined to find the right person to have children with, and that didn’t happen until I was 35. When mine and Alex’s attempts to naturally conceive failed, and then Alex died, only at that point did I know I had the maturity to go it alone. I do have some regrets – I wish I’d frozen my eggs at the peak of my fertility in my mid-twenties, for instance (this process costs between £4,000 and £7,000 in the UK). But otherwise, having children in my forties was the right thing to do. Yes, I had my wobbles. I remember sobbing on the bathroom floor after yet another failed pregnancy test. I would berate myself for leaving it so late. I had to force myself to remember that many women experience fertility struggles in their twenties and thirties, too. All of those anxious feelings, though, flew out the window once I had my first child. When I left the hospital to begin parenthood alone, a new bag of nappies in hand, I didn’t have a meltdown. I was just so grateful that I’d had a baby, especially when the odds seemed so stacked against me. Sleepless nights trying to coax my child back to sleep were what I had most desired. It was all so good, in fact, that I went on to have a second child in my forties. I had a spare embryo in a freezer in St Petersburg. Now I call her Liberty. Every day since becoming a mum, I have embraced the mess and chaos, and appreciate every minute. I’m sure my younger self would cringe at the thought of me spending my evenings helping my children with their homework. But I’m proud to say that I’m living my best life. Read More Vanessa Hudgens addresses pregnancy speculation amid Cole Tucker engagement Rachel Bilson reveals she’s suffered multiple miscarriages Pregnant woman has maternity photo shoot in hospital before giving birth Hailey Bieber responds to ‘disheartening’ pregnancy rumours Like Rebecca Adlington, I also lost my baby at 20 weeks Britney Spears reveals she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake

Alex Murdaugh’s accomplice and friend Corey Fleming is now cooperating with the FBI over the convicted killer’s scheme to steal millions of dollars from his dead housekeeper’s family. Fleming, a longtime friend and law school classmate of the disgraced legal scion, accepted a plea deal with federal prosecutors this week over his involvement in Murdaugh’s financial fraud schemes. He appeared in federal court in South Carolina on Thursday where he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. At the court hearing, Fleming confessed that he had taken part in one of Murdaugh’s financial schemes – and admitted that he knew what he was doing when he did so. Prosecutors allege that Murdaugh orchestrated a financial fraud scheme which included stealing almost $4.3m from the estate of Gloria Satterfield and its insurance carriers. Satterfield was the Murdaugh’s longtime housekeeper who died in a mysterious “trip and fall” accident at the prominent family’s 1,700-acre Moselle estate in South Carolina in 2018 – the same property where Murdaugh shot dead his wife Maggie and adult son Paul three years later. Following her death, Murdaugh recommended that Satterfield’s sons hire his friend and fellow attorney Fleming to represent them in bringing a wrongful death claim against him, so that they could collect from his homeowner’s insurance policies. The insurance companies ultimately settled the estate’s claim for more than $4m – two payments of $505,000 and $3.8m. Murdaugh and Fleming then stole the settlement money for themselves and the housekeeper’s sons didn’t get a dime. Much of the stolen money was funneled through a fake “Forge” bank account which sought to imitate the legitimate and totally unrelated business Forge Consulting. In accepting the plea deal, Fleming admitted that he helped Murdaugh steal the insurance money meant for Satterfield’s sons and has agreed to cooperate with the FBI and US Attorney’s office in the case. He has also agreed to submit to polygraph tests and to turn over his law licences in South Carolina and Georgia. He faces up to five years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 when he is sentenced at a later date. He was released Thursday on a $25,000 unsecured bond. He is also facing separate state charges over the Satterfield case. Ronnie Richter, an attorney representing the Satterfield family, welcomed Fleming’s guilty plea. “This was a good day for justice because this is the first time anyone associated with the Satterfield case has pleaded guilty to anything,” he said. Fleming’s plea deal comes the same week that Murdaugh was indicted on a slew of new charges over their scheme. The South Carolina Attorney General’s Office announced on Wednesday that a federal grand jury had returned a 22-count indictment against the 54-year-old disgraced legal dynasty heir, charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. The convicted killer was already awaiting trial on more than 100 financial crimes charges over a decade-long multi-million-dollar fraud scheme where Murdaugh stole millions from his law firm and legal clients – a scheme he confessed to orchestrating when he took the stand at his murder trial. But, now he has been hit with a further 22 charges for what prosecutors describe as three separate schemes to steal money from personal injury clients he represented through his law firm. As well as the scheme with Fleming, prosecutors allege that Murdaugh ran a second scheme from at least September 2005 to September 2021, where he allegedly routed and redirected clients’ settlement funds into his own pocket including by directing his law firm colleagues to pay the funds directly into his personal account. In the third scheme, Murdaugh and his banker Russell Laffitte allegedly conspired from July 2011 to October 2021 to commit wire fraud and bank fraud. Laffitte, who was CEO of Palmetto State Bank at the time, acted as Murdaugh’s personal banker and as a custodian or conservator for some of his law firm clients. Laffitte then conspired to defraud those clients, with the two men diverting the money to themselves. Laffitte was convicted in November of financial fraud charges in connection to Murdaugh’s alleged white collar fraud schemes. Murdaugh faces up to 30 years in prison on the highest charges of wire fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in the new indictment. His other financial charges already amount to more than 700 years in prison if convicted. Even without the financial charges, Murdaugh will already spend the remainder of his life in prison after he was found guilty on 2 March of murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul on the family’s Moselle property back on 7 June 2021. Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison the day after the verdict. Satterfield, who worked for the family for more than 20 years, was found at the bottom of the steps leading into the family’s home. She never resumed consciousness and died from her injuries three weeks later on 26 February. At the time, Murdaugh claimed that she had tripped over the family’s dogs and hit her head, and her death was regarded as an accidental fall. However, her death certificate cited her manner of death as “natural” and no autopsy was ever carried out. Questions have been swirling around Satterfield’s death for the past few years as the string of deaths, stolen money and corruption surrounding Murdaugh came to light. In September 2021, an investigation was reopened into her death and investigators said they planned to exhume her body. Satterfield’s death isn’t the only mystery death tied to the South Carolina legal dynasty. A homicide investigation has also been opened into the 2015 death of Stephen Smith, who was found dead in the middle of a road in Hampton County. The openly gay 19-year-old had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and his death was officially ruled a hit-and-run. But Smith’s family have long doubted this version of events, with the Murdaugh name cropping up in several police tips and community rumours. At the time of his murder, Paul was also awaiting trial for the boat crash death of Mallory Beach. Read More Alex Murdaugh indicted on 22 new financial fraud charges for stealing money from dead housekeeper’s family Audio reveals Alex Murdaugh blaming dogs for housekeeper’s death – after he walked back claim five years later Stephen Smith’s body is exhumed after murder near Murdaugh home – as family offers $35k reward to catch killer

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