Daljinder Kaur, 70, and her husband of 46 years, 79-year-old Mohinder Singh Gill, are now the proud parents of their first (and most likely only) child. Armaan Singh, 4.4 pounds, was born in India on April 19, with the help of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization). In an interview with AFP, Kaur said, "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."
The head of the fertility clinic, Anurag Bishnoi, told AFP that he was doubtful at first, because Kaur looked "very frail," (because she's SEVENTY). However, her test results indicated that it was still possible for her to carry a baby to term, so he went ahead with the treatment (which did indeed use the couple's own egg and sperm). That's pretty surprising, considering a woman typically enters menopause at around 50 or so, and you can't even keep eggs in a refrigerator for more than, say, a decade (just a guess), without them going bad.
In India, an infertile couple is considered by some to be cursed by god. Kaur told AFP, "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."
Her helpful husband's not worried about them being parents to a baby at such an advanced age, either. He told AFP, "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."
Wow, "so full of energy." Good for them. Obviously Kaur and her husband are no spring chickens. They are, in fact, winter chickens. They are old chickens. They are elderly. There is no way around that. But it's been done before: a 70-year-old grandmother in India set the record for world's oldest mother by giving birth to twins in 2008.
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To some (many) people, the idea of having a baby at 70 is unthinkable. Actually, to some people, the idea of having a baby at any age over, like, 45 sounds like the most exhausting venture imaginable. And as women age, the integrity of their eggs declines—when Halle Berry got pregnant at the age of 46, and then again at 47, tabloids fretted over her "dangerous pregnancy" like she was harboring a bomb in her womb. But more and more older women are doing it, like Daljinder Kaur and Janet Jackson, 49, who just announced her pregnancy, and then probably promptly fell back asleep, because pregnancy is tiring, y'all.