Celebrity Moms Over 40: Stars Who Gave Birth, Had Kids Later in Life

Several celebrity moms waited until they were in their 40s (and even 50s!) before having kids. While some dealt with fertility struggles, others simply waited until it was the right time in their lives to have children. Either way, many A-list mamas are totally killing the parenting game.

Take Gwen Stefani — she welcomed her third child, Apollo Bowie Flynn Rossdale, with ex-husband Gavin Rossdale when she was 44 years old in 2014. The singer even called her youngest her “miracle” in a September 2014 interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers, while explaining how other son Kingston Rossdale was praying for another sibling.

“[Kingston] has a direct link to God, basically,” the “Hollaback Girl” artist said. “He asked me, ‘Mom, are you gonna have a baby? I want you to have a baby.’ I was like, ‘It’s over. We’re not having any more. This is our family.’ … And four weeks later, I was pregnant!”

Another prominent name is actress Halle Berry, who explained in a 2007 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show that she got a positive pregnancy test result after taking 35 tests.

“There’s so few genuine surprises in life anymore that, why not have a huge surprise?” the Catwoman actress said at the time. “I think it validated that I was meant to be a mother because every day, I dealt with the character as a mother and thinking as a mother. It let me know that I must be a mother.”

Halle has, indeed, portrayed multiple mama figure characters in movies, such as Kidnap. She welcomed her first child, Nahla Ariela Aubry, with ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry in 2008 when she was 41 years old and her second baby, Maceo Robert Martinez, with ex-husband Olivier Martinez in 2013 when she was 47.

And since motherhood doesn’t come easily for everyone, a few other Hollywood stars have faced difficulties with bearing children. Mariah Carey is one of them, as she took the fertility-boosting hormone, progesterone, after she suffered from a miscarriage in 2008 while still married to ex-husband Nick Cannon at the time.

The “All I Want for Christmas” songstress opened up about the hardship in her member The Meaning of Mariah Carey, which was released in 2020.

“It was near Christmastime, and I was 10 weeks pregnant,” she wrote in her book. “It was our Christmas miracle … On a routine checkup at our obstetrician’s office, the sonogram was silent. The sacred, rhythmic swoosh of our baby’s heartbeat was gone — and in that silence, I could hear my own heart crack.”

After she was able to move forward from the devastating incident, Mariah later welcomed twins Moroccan and Monroe Cannon in April 2011 when she was 41 years old.

Scroll through the gallery to see other famous stars who welcomed their bundles of joy into the world in their 40s.