Halle Berry Had Her Second Baby When She Least Expected It, and Her Life Changed Completely

“I didn’t think it was possible at my age. They call it a geriatric pregnancy,” Halle Berry opened up about having her second child when she was 47. The actress, who became a mother for the first time at 41, said that her pregnancy was unexpected. And according to Dr. Joshua U. Klein, medical director of Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York-Brooklyn, this makes sense since it’s estimated that after the age of 45, the chances of becoming pregnant without intervention decrease and reach 0.01%.

In 2013, Halle Berry announced she would become a mom again with her then-husband, Olivier Martinez. At the time, Nahla, the actress’s daughter from her first marriage to Gabriel Aubry, was six.

In an interview, the actress told an anecdote about how her little girl wished and asked all the time to have a little brother. Halle jokingly remarked, “Only her prayers could have done this.”

“Nahla prayed and prayed for him for like a year and a half, for a baby and a bunk bed, and she got both of those things,” shared Berry. She then added that when Nahla’s little brother was born, she only wanted to be by his side, taking care of him and changing his clothes and diapers.

The A-list star, who is the first African American to have won an Oscar for Best Actress, said that when it all happened, she was going about her business, doing her life, and even mentioned that she felt she was pre-menopausal.

“I didn’t think it was possible to have another baby, and I thought for sure I had a need never to get married again. So I’ve learned never to say never,” revealed the actress.

She also confessed that she loved being pregnant: “All the hormones made me feel amazing. I was so alive with my purpose and my femininity. It felt like my body was doing what it was built to do.”

In October of that same year, her son Maceo was born. Halle spoke candidly about the difference between her children when breastfeeding. She revealed that while the baby girl breastfed gently, her second son seemed to be sucking the life out of her.

In 2019, when the boy was five years old, the actress opened up even more about maternity: “You’re so much more ready to be a parent after 40 than when you’re 20. You know yourself better. You’ve done a lot of things for yourself. When you wait later in life, you can really put your kids forward, I think, in a more meaningful way.”

“Being a mom is the best job,” shared Halle. She also mentioned that her children don’t care who she is outside their home and that Nahla found out from her friends at school that her mom was an actress.

“For the last year, my son has been saying my full name really loudly in public like, ’Halle Berry, can you pass me the ketchup?’ It’s just so embarrassing! He knows it gets a reaction from people, but he can’t quite figure out why,” she joked.