A 66-year-old Romanian woman is believed to have become the world’s oldest mother on Sunday, after giving birth to a girl.
Doctors at the Giulesti Maternity hospital in Bucharest said Adriana Iliescu’s daughter, Eliza Maria, was delivered by caesarean section more than six weeks before the end of a normal, 40-week pregnancy. The child’s twin sister was stillborn.
Iliescu’s extraordinary case is likely to lead to renewed calls for curbs on fertility treatment. She had earlier defended her decision to become pregnant by saying that she came from a family with an unusual history of longevity.
A hospital spokesperson said on Sunday night that her daughter weighed 1,5kg less than half the weight of an average newborn. She was in the intensive care unit, but breathing on her own. ”The mother is doing well. She is saying she has been given a new lease of life,” the spokesperson added.
Doctors performed the emergency caesarean after the smaller of the twins died in Iliescu’s womb.
Iliescu had undergone fertility treatment for nine years, including procedures to reverse the effects of menopause, before being artificially inseminated, said Bogdan Marinescu, who runs the hospital.
When he was asked why he had been so willing to help a 66-year-old woman become pregnant, Marinescu replied: ”She was in the right condition to carry a pregnancy.”
A 65-year-old retired schoolteacher in India was reported to have become the oldest mother in the world in 2003.
The Guinness Book of Records has previously named two 63-year-old women, an Italian and an American, as holding the record. – Guardian Unlimited Â