70-year old gives birth to first baby

A 70-year-old woman who gave birth said on Tuesday that she was not too old to become a first-time mother, adding that her life was now complete.

Daljinder Kaur gave birth last month to a boy following two years of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment at a fertility clinic in Haryana with her 79-year-old husband.

Kaur said the couple, married for 46 years, had almost lost hope of ever having a child. “God heard our prayers. My life feels complete now. 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,” said Kaur, who is from Amritsar.

“When we saw the (IVF) advert, we thought we should also give it a try as I badly wanted to have a baby of my own,” she said. Kaur put her age at about 70, while the clinic said in a statement that she was 72.

The baby was conceived using the couple’s own egg and sperm and was now “healthy and hearty”



after weighing just 2 kg (4.4 pounds) at birth on April 19, the National Fertility and Test Tube Centre said.

Kaur’s husband, Mohinder Singh Gill, who owns a farm outside Amritsar, said he was unfazed about their age, saying god would watch over their child whom they named Armaan.

“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,” said Mohinder. Anurag Bishnoi, who runs the fertility clinic, said he was initially sceptical about going ahead with IVF, but tests showed Kaur was able to carry the unborn baby.

“I first tried to avoid the case because she looked very frail. Then we made her undergo all the tests and once all the results were okay we went ahead,” said the doctor. The case is not the first in India, with a 72-year-old woman from Uttar Pradesh reportedly giving birth to twins in 2008, also through IVF.