Brigitte Nielsen: Keeping It Real and Rocking On As a 55-Year-Old New Mom

File under: The media hasn’t had an OMG-she’s-so-old celebrity pregnancy story in a while, so it’s time to make one up! This installment is courtesy of Today.com, where someone apparently decided it was time to stick a fork in 55-year-old new mom Brigitte Nielsen and see if she’s done.

And? Brigitte Nielsen is emphatically not done. She sounds like she’s killing it, loving life as a new (again) mom, after raising four now-adult children decades ago. Her new baby Frida, the first daughter she’s had, is now seven months old, and sounds like she’s thriving. Nielsen bounced back from this pregnancy after just two and a half weeks—about a fraction of what it’s taken most other moms we know, in their 20s, 30s or anytime.

As quoted in this (surprisingly upbeat!) Today.com piece, Nielsen is grateful for the chance to be a mom in her 50s—with 25-year-old husband Mattia Dessi–and she isn’t taking a bit of it for granted. She’s keeping it real about how hard it was to get pregnant (many celebrities don’t want to go there), and about her egg-freezing decision at age 40. Despite hearing from her doctors that she’d have about a 3 or 4 percent chance of getting pregnant through IVF at her age, she tried for years and finally beat the odds, just before she called it quits.

Reality check: Most civilians don’t have anywhere near the financial resources to try as many times as Nielsen did, but she seems humbled by the expense, and the strains on her marriage along the way, and the good luck she’s had.

She plans to continue her acting career even as a 55-year-old new mom—rock on, Nielsen—and she gave Today’s Sarah Coffey some inspiring words to live by:

“Age shouldn’t define what we do. ... You’re given one life. Only one. Life is so exciting and so amazing, so don’t waste your time.”

Photo by Wolfgang H. Wögerer, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.