If Zoe Tay had her way, she would be trying for her fourth child right now. The elegant actress and mother to three boys - aged two, five and seven - has always wanted four kids.

Turning 45 last week isn't what's stopping her baby-making plans. Tay is in the pink of health, she said.

Instead, it's her 44-year-old pilot husband Philip Chionh's concern over the cost of having more children.

Tay told The New Paper: "I do want a baby girl so I will let nature take its course. If it happens, it happens and I will welcome being pregnant again.

"My husband had actually wanted us to stop at two, as he says it's very expensive to have kids these days.

"He wants his own peace and quiet as well, something that he has missed since the kids came along. "But life is unpredictable, so who knows?"

Asked if she was using contraception at the moment, she said no.

Tay added that she had always wanted her first child to be a girl so that "she can help me take care of her younger brothers".

"I heard that girls are more likely than boys to take care of their mother," she said.

"Daughters will also come home more often, not like sons after they get married.

"And if my daughter has kids, we will be even closer as she will understand what I have gone through."

Tay said that after she married at 33, she decided to wait four years to try for her first child as she wanted to settle into married life first.

She revealed that she and her husband had seriously considered in-vitro fertilisation - where an egg is fertilised by sperm outside the body - after their first few tries for a baby had failed.

But it turned out that she didn't need the help as she went on to have not one, but three, healthy baby boys.

Brayden, 7, and Ashton, 5, were no surprises as they were planned pregnancies. Tay delivered both without an epidural.

In fact, Ashton was delivered within 50 minutes of Tay arriving at the hospital.

On going without pain-killers, she said: "It's very painful, a kind of pain that you cannot imagine.

"But when you see your child, it's all worth it."

She calls youngest son Nathan, 2 - who was delivered via caesarean section - her "miracle baby".

All because she did many " funny, funny things" when she didn't realise she was pregnant back in 2010.

Said Tay: "I was doing all the things that a pregnant woman should never be doing.

"While spring cleaning and moving lots of heavy furniture around my house, I even fell hard on my bum.

"I was up late stitching cushions and even went for a mammogram. So when I found out I was pregnant, I retook the test twice because I couldn't believe it!"