Actor Trina McGee has announced she’s pregnant at 54 years old.
The “Boys Meets World” alum shared the news on Instagram Monday with the caption, “Gonna sign off social media for a bit. Thanks for your prayers and well wishes in advance.”
“At the tender age of 54, I have found myself pregnant,” the post read as The Supremes’ “Baby Love” played. “Please bless us with your prayers for a safe delivery. Thank you.”
This will be McGee’s fourth child and first with her husband of nearly two decades, Marcello Thedford. She’s already a mom to 31-year-old Ramia, 29-year-old Langston and 25-year-old Ezra — two of whom she shares with ex-husband Courtland Davis, according to ET.
McGee’s first recurring TV role was playing Angela Moore, the love interest to now 44-year-old Rider Strong’s Shawn Hunter, on “Boy Meets World” for its final three seasons, wrapping in 2000.
Recently, the actor revealed on Instagram that she was six months pregnant while filming an episode that premiered in 1998.
“That time I played a teenager but in reality I was six months pregnant,” she said on Instagram in April.
Data released by the CDC in April shows the average age for first-time mothers is rising in the U.S., hitting a record-high of 27.3 years old. And while birth rates are down overall, they’re rising among older women. From 2021 to 2022, the number of babies born to women 45 to 49 rose 12%, the first increase since 2016.
Reports say the increasing reasons for delaying pregnancy can be concerns about finances, prioritizing education or career or that women are waiting longer to find a partner. And for celebrities, some studies say it’s even more common to wait.
Research published in the Journal of Women’s Health in 2019 found the average age for a first-time pregnant celebrity was 33.8 compared to the then-average of 26.8 years. There are also studies that show women who live in bigger cities and/or on the coasts — such as in entertainment-heavy cities like Los Angeles and New York City — wait longer to have kids while those in rural areas have children younger.
And McGee isn’t the only star who pursued the expansion of her family later in her life. Janet Jackson surprised fans when she had her first child, son Eissa Al Mana, at 50 years old in 2017, as did Naomi Campbell when she announced her daughter’s birth in 2021 when she was 50. Chloë Sevigny was pregnant with her first child at 45, and Hilary Swank became pregnant with twins at 48. The list goes on.
However, getting pregnant after the age of 35 is still considered an “advanced maternal age,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. That comes with a greater risk of complications, such as miscarriage, congenital disorders and high blood pressure. This is due to a decrease in egg quality, but the health of a pregnancy is still dependent on how healthy you are overall, Cleveland Clinic says.
