India: Woman In Her 70s Gives Birth To Healthy Baby Boy Following IVF Treatment
It was third time lucky when a septuagenarian couple in India welcomed a baby boy into their lives after two years of in vitro fertilization treatment.
At an age where people would normally be celebrating their grand or great grand children, Daljinder Kaur and her husband, Mohinder Singh Gill, 79, were thrilled when Kaur gave birth last month after two years of IVF treatment with donor eggs in India’s northern state of Haryana. This is reportedly their first successful pregnancy in 46 years of marriage and their son, weighing 4.4lb (2kg), has been named Arman.
As reported by 9 News, Kaur’s exact age is unknown, and she has reportedly said she is around 70 years of age, but she has no birth certificate, which is apparently a common thing in India. However, Anurag Bishnoi, the owner of the National Fertility and Test Tube baby center in Hisar and an embryologist who helped the couple, believes she could be 72.
Crikey!
Indian woman in her 70s gives birth to healthy baby boy | World news | The Guardian
(via @Fraz86) https://t.co/vvUxWOUnn5— Jon (@RudolphUcker) May 11, 2016
Bishnoi said, “She has said she is five to seven years younger than her husband, and his birth certificate shows he was born on 12/04/1937.”
Living in a country where infertility is often seen as a curse from God, Kaur said she and her farmer husband had almost given up hope of having their own child. However, according to the Telegraph, she said God heard their prayers,, and her life now feels complete.
“I am looking after the baby all by myself. I feel so full of energy. My husband is also very caring and helps me as much as he can.”
Kaur said that she badly wanted a baby of her own and when they saw an advert for the IVF treatment, they decided to give it a go.
Meanwhile Bishnoi’s clinic has successfully carried out IVF treatments on several geriatric couples, including Rajo Devi Lohan, who gave birth to her first baby, a girl, at the age of 70 in 2008. Reportedly, another woman, aged 66, gave birth to triplets after treatments at the clinic.
Reportedly Bishnoi set up the IVF clinic after gaining a master’s in clinical embryology at the University of Leeds. He explained that Kaur and Gill had suffered numerous setbacks in trying to conceive a child and had previously been unable to afford the IVF treatment. Reportedly, the couple adopted a boy in the 1980s, but he traveled to the U.S. to study and never returned home.
Woman believed to be in her 70s has given birth to a healthy baby boy making her the world’s oldest mum: https://t.co/yGQIrhvF2N #9News
— Nine News Australia (@9NewsAUS) May 10, 2016
Under Indian law, any person who is infertile reportedly does not receive a piece of land or any property from his father. Bishnoi said Gill had to fight his father in the courts. “He won, and then he got this piece of land and he got the money for the treatment.”
While Kaur appeared frail and Bishnoi said initially he was reluctant to perform the procedure, after a series of medical tests and cardio checks, she proved to be fit and healthy. He said the risk to her health from pregnancy would be no worse than if she was middle-aged.
It turned out to be third time lucky for the couple, as Kaur had two attempts with donor eggs, then a gap of six months, and on the third attempt she finally fell pregnant.
Speaking of the couple’s advanced age and the future of the baby, Bishnoi explained they have relatives who are ready to care for the baby, and reportedly you can make anyone a guardian in India.
According to the proud father, he isn’t worried about their ages, saying, “People say, what will happen to the child once we die. But I have full faith in God. God is omnipotent and omnipresent, he will take care of everything.”
[Photo via Flickr by Maurizio De Angelis, Wellcome Images, cropped and resized/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]
