She Waited Until 50 to Become a Mum, and Calls It the Best Decision of Her Life

Back in 2021, Kelly Clarke from Crawley in the UK became a first-time mother at 50 after flying to Athens for IVF using a donor egg and donor sperm. Her daughter, Lyla Rae, is now around five years old. As her story resurfaces online, here’s what actually happened, and what fertility science really says about starting a family later in life.

Kelly spent years building her career and travelling before deciding to become a mother alone. She’d been told by a clinic that she would need to be three months pregnant before turning 50, and that a donor would be required.

She kept the whole trip to herself. “I didn’t tell anyone I was going,” she said of her first visit to IVF Serum, a fertility clinic in Athens.

Flying solo to Greece

The pandemic delayed things, but Kelly returned to Athens in July 2020 for a three-day trip, where she was implanted with the fertilised embryos. Then she flew home and went straight back to work.

Lyla Rae Clarke was born by caesarean on March 31, 2021, at Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath, weighing 7lb 8oz. Kelly called it the best birthday of her life.

Donor egg IVF doesn’t decline as sharply with the recipient’s age as fertility with a woman’s own eggs does. The main factor is the uterus, not the recipient’s age, and research shows pregnancy rates staying comparatively steady into a woman’s late 40s and beyond. What does rise with age is the risk profile around pregnancy and delivery itself, which is a real consideration, just not the same as fertility being doomed by age.

Kelly described the pregnancy as largely straightforward, with cravings for strawberries and pineapple and swelling mostly limited to her ankles. She had help from her mother and sister in the first weeks, then settled into raising Lyla alone.

She’s said the fears that come with single parenthood tend to fade once the child actually arrives.