Life increasingly starts after 40, figures show

Rotorua's Erina Fiddler loves being mum to a newborn at 45.
"I think we are quite blessed," she says.
Mrs Fiddler is among a growing number of New Zealand women over 40 who are having children.
Ministry of Health figures show last year 2479 Kiwis gave birth aged 40 years or over - up from 1458 births in that age group a decade ago.
Mrs Fiddler gave birth to Sapphire just over four weeks ago and loves being a mum.
Sapphire is her fourth child with a 25-year gap between her oldest and youngest. It has been 14 years since she had her third child.
Mrs Fiddler and her husband Peter, who recently married, had planned to have a baby. Mr Fiddler is a first-time dad at 47.
He asked his wife what she wanted for Christmas last year and Mrs Fiddler said a baby. On Christmas Day she found out she was pregnant.
"It was like it was meant to be. I was rapt."
Mrs Fiddler said she received some negative comments when people found out.
People had also asked if she was going to have tests for various conditions like Down Syndrome, which she did for "peace of mind".
She never thought when she was younger that she would be having a baby at the age of 45.
However, she thinks she is better off the fourth time round.
"I'm a lot more relaxed. It's a lot easier. No more cloth nappies." She remembers spending all day washing cloth nappies in an agitator washing machine when her first child Kara, 25, was born.
The Fiddlers have a changing table now with a bath included. There was nothing that fancy a quarter of a century ago.
She said she was surprised at the increasing number of women over 40 having children as she had never seen any other older women pregnant.
Long-time Rotorua midwife Maureen O'Reilly was not surprised more mothers over 40 were giving birth now than 10 years ago but she didn't realise the increase was that high.
She has two clients who are 42. She has had a 43-year-old mother and when she worked at Rotorua Hospital in the mid-1990s she had helped in the post-natal care of a 47-year-old mother.
She urged older mothers to join an antenatal class or a good peer group to avoid being a "lonely older mother".
Long-time Rotorua midwife Diane Travis said out of a workload of 50 mothers about 10 per cent were over 40.
Ms Travis said older mums took longer to "bounce back" than younger mums and older mums should not be hard on themselves for that.