Sonia Kruger's pregnancy, don't break out the bubbly just yet

This weekend 48 year old television presenter Sonia Kruger announced she is 16 weeks pregnant to partner Craig McPherson.  This comes after years of struggling to conceive and two previous miscarriages.  As the mainstream media constantly reports, the older you are the harder it is to conceive and carry a pregnancy full term.  In Fact Kruger's own IVF doctor has said that in all the time he has worked in the field he has not seen one woman over the age of 45 have a successful pregnancy.  Before anyone comments, I'm the product of conception over 40 as is my brother (40 and 43 respectively when born).

Obviously like the mainstream media I'm happy for Kruger that she's finally getting a child that she wants desperately, but lets not forget that she could still miscarry.  Miscarriages are incredibly common.  Last month Today co host Georgie Gardner announced that she'd struggled with a miscarriage and wanted to focus on her children.  The woman, Christine Sams who interviewed Georgie at the Daily Telegraph said during the interview that she'd been through miscarriages herself.  How recent her miscarriage is we weren't told.  Earlier this month Home and Away star Ada Nicodemou had a still birth.  The baby boy was born on the 9th of August and Ada and her husband Chris asked for privacy and were sent condolences.

The founder of Australian website, MamaMia, Mia Freedman who found early success in women's and teen magazines like Dolly and Cosmopolitan had a miscarriage in 2009.  She too suffered a miscarriage which she says nearly broke her.  Recently Mia Freedman along with colleague Rebecca Sparrow (who has also suffered a miscarriage) released a book, Never Forgotten, which is a book about the pain mothers go through when miscarrying (let's not forget that men also suffer these miscarriages - just because they don't physically carry the baby, it still affects them).  Since Gardner's story, others have come forward in saying they've had miscarriages.

Political reporter Lyndal Curtis is one such woman.  In 2011 she was 38 weeks pregnant when she miscarried a daughter called Madeline.

I don't want to put a dampener on the joy of Sonia Kruger's news but she could still suffer a miscarriage (I don't think she will) so until the baby is born it's not a certainty, though I would imagine she'll be doing everything in her power to ensure she has a healthy pregnancy.  It just pays to remember that although 80-90% of pregnancies go full time, 10-20% don't.

I do however agree with several commentators including MamaMia's Rebecca Sparrow, the age at which you become a parent doesn't matter.  In fact I'd go so far as to say older parents make better parents because they're more stable financially and they've "been there done that" on a lot of things that other parents might do which could hurt the kid's upbringing.

I'm pretty certain I don't want kids but if I did have kids it would be late 30s - early to mid 40s.

Good luck and congratulations to Sonia Kruger.