I gave birth when I was 2 months away from my 43rd birthday. I had practically no problems. I was living abroad at the time, and my doctor, who was from Switzerland, did an ultrasound every month, not because of my age but because that's the way she did things.
On my last visit before I flew back to the US, she found that I had polyhydramnios - too much amniotic fluid. It's still too soon after routine measurements of amniotic fluid to know what that means, but aside from a couple of birth defects that some theorize it is associated with, it is often associated with diabetes. My child was also measuring large for gestational age, another sign of diabetes.
When I got back to the US, I was assigned a maternal fetal medicine doctor. This may have happened even without the polyhydramnios and large baby just because of my age. I was also overweight, though I actually lost weight during the pregnancy.
It turned out I had no diabetes. My child was not diabetic. She had no other issues either except that she had jaundice pretty bad and she continues to have asthma, but I think this might be that she was probably not as far along as we thought and was slightly premature. (I had set my due date based on me conceiving the night my husband returned from three months abroad. I was induced at 37.5 weeks based on my estimated due date, but I'm thinking it might have actually been 35.5 weeks because of a physical development of my child that I initially thought was just a very odd physical characteristic but which two weeks after birth was actually normal. And she has a "hairy" back.)
I never felt better than when I was pregnant. I should qualify this by saying that no woman in my family has morning sickness. But I felt that "pregnancy glow." I had more energy. I felt more balanced. I felt strong. And I was carrying around excess amniotic fluid and a large baby, so I looked like I was having triplets.
As an older parent, I am not as energetic as someone 10 or 20 years my junior. There are also the fears that I will not be around for my child as long as someone 10 or 20 years younger than I am would be. There is the problem that the parents of my daughter's peers are not my peers. We can't really relate. (I know there are a lot of women out there like me, but I haven't met them yet.)
Other than that, and your partner's particular health issues, and the greater possibility of there being chromosomal anomalies, there is nothing to stop you from having a child at that age. Not only are more and more woman doing so, but during my pregnancy, I found a paper, which I haven't been able to find since then, that put the median age of women giving birth in around 1910 or 1920 at 40. Think about that. How many women must have been giving birth older than that for 40 to be the median age. I'm not even sure I believe it, but I definitely found it, and lost it.
I wanted to add that my labor, while long due to being induced, was relatively easy and routine. I did have to have an episiotomy, but that had nothing to do with my age. My daughter was about an 8/9 on the Apgar rating, maybe a 7/9.
And, last, though I know I am biased, my feelings are reinforced regularly by daycare providers, camp counselors, and people who come into regular contact with my daughter, she is particularly smart, which is good because due to my age, in the back of my mind I felt she sort of had to be like Ceasar's wife.
