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Pregnancy and childbirth in older mothers
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Thanks to scientific advances, women aged 55 or even 65 years old can now become pregnant and give birth to healthy children. (Shutterstock/File)
F
ollowing news that singer Janet Jackson has given birth to her first child at the age of 50, stories of women above 40 delivering babies has come to public attention.
Such a phenomenon is actually not unusual. Thanks to scientific advances, women aged 55 or even 65 years old can now become pregnant and give birth to healthy children.
As reported by kompas.com, according to records, the oldest woman who has delivered a baby was an Indian named Rajo Devi Lohan at 70 years of age, who reportedly underwent fertility treatments. In 2006, a 62-year-old woman in California gave birth to her 12th child using in-vitro fertilization (IVF). In the same year, a 66-year-old Spanish woman in Los Angeles also delivered a healthy baby through a similar procedure.
A 2010 research paper by the Pew Research Center found that though most women on average gave birth in their late 20s, the number of babies delivered by women aged 35-39 increased by 47 percent and for 40-44 years old women by 80 percent. In Britain, around three babies are born every week from 50-something mothers.
(Read also: How to know if your body is not ready for pregnancy)
Though the ideal age of childbirth is said to be 20-35 years old, it is increasingly safer for women to give birth at the age of 50 thanks to more advanced medical technology, improved health outcomes and increased life expectancy compared to previous generations. Advanced science has also provided a solution for women above 35 who are having difficulty in getting pregnant naturally.
Dr. Eric Flisser, a medical director from New York's Reproductive Medical Associated, said that age was no longer a factor in the selection of IVF program candidates, especially if the couple used an egg or sperm donor. "Besides, the egg cell that was implanted in older women usually came from younger women, so there is no more risk of identical chromosome abnormalities in the pregnancy of older women," he said.
Pregnancy in women above 40 may have a higher risk of miscarriage, but there is a solution for that by using a surrogate mother, or 'borrowing' other woman's womb during the 9-month pregnancy period.
Nevertheless, pregnancy and childbirth for women above 50 will need quite a lot of financial preparation. The mother's physical condition must also be healthy, since she will have to take care of the baby afterwards. (kes)
