74-year-old Yerramatti Manjayamma gave birth to two twin girls on the morning of September 5 in a hospital in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
The pensioner went through menopause 30 years ago, but was able to get pregnant through the procedure in vitro fertilization (IVF) with the help of a donor egg.
Manjayamma is 8 years older than the previous oldest mother in the world and is the new record holder in this category.
The father of the child was her 78-year-old husband Raja Rao, with whom the woman lived for 57 years. And she was inspired to the idea of late motherhood by her neighbor, who in the same way gave birth to a child at 55 years old.
When the Akhalia hospital in the city of Guntur learned about Manjayamma's desire, they offered to pay the high cost of the operation themselves, as they themselves wondered if everything would turn out as planned. In addition, they immediately realized that if everything worked out, it would be a great advertisement for their clinic.
Since Manjayamma got married, she and her husband have not been able to conceive a child and she was declared infertile. Now the woman does not hide her great joy that she finally waited for the birth of a child, and not one, but two at once.
“My almost 60-year wait is finally over! No one else will call me sterile,” she tells reporters.
A relative of Manjayamma with one of her daughters in her arms
The previous official record holder was 66-year-old Bousada de Lara, who in December 2006 gave birth to two twin boys in a Los Angeles clinic using IVF. She paid 37 thousand dollars for the procedure.
There was also 70-year-old Indian Omkari Panwar, who gave birth to twins in 2008, but her age has not been officially confirmed.
As a rule, IVF is not done for women over 43 years old, but some private clinics allow exceptions. And if a woman has already gone through menopause, she is given a choice of donor eggs or her own, if she previously frozen them.
When Manjayamma became pregnant, she spent most of her time in the hospital under the supervision of doctors, because they were afraid that she would not be able to bear children normally. It is believed that with IVF, the chance of successfully bearing a child for women over 44 is only 2%. But then everything worked out.
True, after the birth of twins, Manjayamma did not begin to produce milk in her breast, but she will feed them with an artificial mixture.
