ROMANIA: Woman Expecting Twins At Age of 67

BUCHAREST, Romania (The Scotsman), December 31, 2004: THE SCOTSMAN of Edinburgh reported on December 31, 2004 that a 67-year old Romanian woman who is seven months pregnant with twin girls is due to become the world’s oldest recorded mother. Adriana Iliescu, an author and academic, conceived after undergoing fertility treatment. She is said to have told local television that she had always wanted to become a mother, but had been unable to conceive naturally. However, she had never been able to accept the idea that she would not have children and described her pregnancy as "the happiest time of my life". Though doubts have been expressed about her becoming a mother at such a advanced age, she has said that as her family has a history of longevity, she is not worried about becoming a mother just three years before her 70th birthday. The previous oldest mother was an Indian schoolteacher who, in April last year, at the age of 65, gave birth to a boy. Satyabhama Mahapatra was impregnated with an egg from her 26-year-old niece that had been fertilised by her husband. Doctors had tried to dissuade the woman and her 68-year-old husband, Krishnachandra Mahapatra, from having a baby at their age, but relented after they insisted. It was the first child for Ms Mahapatra and her husband after 50 years of marriage. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the previous record holder was a 63-year-old woman who gave birth to a boy on 18 July, 1994. In the United States, more than 1,000 babies are born a day to women aged between 35 and 44. Unlike women, men can produce children naturally until much later in life. Last year, Sir Paul McCartney became a father again at the age of 60. The oldest mother in Britain is Janet Bosher, who gave birth to twins at the age of 58 in 2002, following a seven-year course of IVF treatment with donated embryos. But only five months later, her partner, Martin Maslin, died of heart attack. The youngest mother is Lina Medina, who delivered a boy by Caesarean section in Lima, in 1939, at the age of five years and seven months. The child was raised as her brother and only discovered Lina was his mother when he was ten. By Craig Brown THE SCOTSMAN