A 64-year-old woman from Burgos in northern Spain has successfully given birth to healthy twins.
The twin — a boy and a girl — were delivered by cesarean section by doctors at Recoletas Hospital.
Just in 2011, the same woman gave birth to a baby girl, then taken by social services in the face of welfare concerns. Social workers found that the baby was raised with poor personal hygiene and in isolated conditions, CBS News reported, citing Spanish daily Diario de Burgos.
Successful Delivery At 64
According to the medical team, the twins born to the woman identified as MIA, are in perfect health.
“This is an exceptional case not only in Castile and Leon, but also in Spain, being one of the few women who, after overcoming the barrier of 58 years, has managed to bring the twin pregnancy to term,” they said in a statement.
The patient went through in-vitro fertilization, an assisted reproduction treatment, in the United States after discovering she was pregnant again. She then returned to Spain and chose the private hospital, which also gave birth to her first child.
The hospital’s medical director Enrique Martin recalled that she showed up four months pregnant at the hospital gates.
The planned cesarean, which is generally indicated in such rare cases, was carried out by a multidisciplinary team of two gynecologists, two pediatricians, two midwives, and a nursing team.
Since 2014, the woman’s first child has been in local authorities’ custody because she was not properly cared for as well as provided schooling. The hospital, as confirmed by Martin to AP last Wednesday, Feb. 15, was already in discussion with social services regarding MIA’s capacity to take care of the twins.
No World Records Broken
It is unusual for a woman her age to deliver a baby at that point, but MIA did not break any world record. Back in April, an Indian named Daljinder Kaur — believed to be at least age 70 — gave birth to a baby boy, the first for her and her 79-year-old husband. Kaur also went through IVF to bear a child.
Spanish paper El Pais also reported two other Spanish women in their '60s had given birth to healthy offspring in recent years.
In Spain, there are no legal limits on the age for assisted reproduction, but experts have warned about the ethics of allowing the procedure in females older than 50. Some feared complications include issues in blood sugar, blood pressure, and factors in maternal health.
In a world first last January, a controversial IVF technique delivered a baby girl to a formerly infertile couple living in Kiev, Ukraine. Called three-person IVF, the pronuclear transfer technique entails fertilizing the mother’s egg with her partner’s sperm and afterward transferring the combined DNA into an egg from a donor.
The baby in Ukraine, born in Jan. 5, maintains the genetic design of her parents as well as a tiny bit of genes from the female donor.
The highly experimental procedure specifically targets women who are at risk of passing on mitochondrial disease or serious genetic disorders. Through this, they are poised to have a healthy offspring despite having faulty mitochondria.
