Throughout her pregnancy, Melany Farr of Las Vegas, Nev., always saw the nurses and other medical staff write the initials "AMA" down on her chart. "For a long time I didn't know what it meant," says Farr. "I finally asked them and they said, 'Advanced Maternal Age.' How harsh is that? Couldn't they just say 'mature' or something?"

According to the March of Dimes, in the year 2000, nearly 52 percent of all live births were to women in their 20s, 34 percent were to women in their 30s and just a little over 2 percent were born to women in their 40s. Coincidentally, that was the year Farr got pregnant at age 40, which put her in that latter category.

Women having babies later in life is a well-documented trend and one that's not confined to the United States. According to Dr Julia C. Berryman, senior lecturer in psychology at Leicester University's School of Psychology in Leicester, England, in the UK, the number of women over 40 having babies has doubled in the past 10 years.

In her definitive study on the topic of older mothers, Older Mothers and Later Motherhood, which is included in Women, Health and the Mind (John Wiley & Sons, 2000), Dr. Berryman notes there are a variety of reasons for this trend. Among them are better contraceptive choices, a desire to pursue a career, feminist ideology and ongoing fertility treatments that may last into a woman's late 30s and early 40s.

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