First-time mother has twins aged 73!
...then father, 82, suffers stroke on day after IVF babies arrived
A WOMAN aged 73 is thought to have become the world’s oldest mother after giving birth to twin girls in what doctors have hailed as a ‘medical miracle’.
Mangayamma Yaramati and her 82year- old husband described themselves as the ‘luckiest couple in the world’ after the delivery following IVF treatment.
Miss Yaramati had spent months at a hospital being monitored by a team of doctors and the twins were delivered on Thursday. Their father, Sitarama Rajarao, said: ‘It is due to the grace of God and doctors that I have now become a proud father of two baby girls. God has answered our prayers. This is the happiest time of my life.’
Asked who would care for the children if anything were to happen to their parents, Mr Rajarao said: ‘Whatever should happen will happen. It is all in the hands of God.’
But just a day after his daughters were born, Mr Rajarao suffered a stroke and is currently being treated in hospital.
The birth has raised questions over whether doctors should be providing IVF treatment to elderly women in India, where the booming market is not strictly regulated.
The couple, who married in 1962, spent decades seeking both medical help and divine intervention after being unable to conceive.
Miss Yaramati said neighbours in her village in the state of Andhra Pradesh, in eastern India, would ‘look at me with accusing eyes’.
She said she was seen as a cursed woman, but her husband – a farmer – stood by her ‘like a rock’. The couple had almost given up hope on becoming parents when a neighbour became pregnant using IVF at the age of 55. Miss Yaramati, who went through the menopause almost 25 years ago, consulted an IVF expert last year and treatment began.
The couple used an egg from a donor, fertilised with Mr Rajarao’s sperm and conceived in the first round of treatment. Miss Yaramati was admitted to hospital in January, and the healthy twins were delivered by caesarean.
It is not known how the couple funded the treatment.
Lead doctor at Ahalya Nursing Home in Guntur, Dr Sanakkayala Umasankar, said: ‘This is a medical miracle. I don’t think she will have any major health issues. She cannot breast-feed the babies. But no worries.’
He said that the hospital had followed all laws amid criticism the decision to offer the couple IVF.
India’s booming fertility market has seen an estimated 2,000 unregulated clinics open in recent years. Earlier this year, the authorities said they were considering an upper age limit for IVF.
Daljinder Kaur, from Amritsar, in Punjab, northern India, who was estimated to be 72 by doctors, gave birth to a boy in 2016.
The oldest verified mother was previously Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara, from Spain, who gave birth to twins at the age of 66 in 2006. She was diagnosed with cancer within a year and died in 2009.
‘Questions over IVF for elderly’