New York Daily News

With teens!

Oldest ma fetes b’day, has ‘energy of 40-yr.-old’

- BY REUVEN BLAU Aleta St. James with twins Francesca and Gian. They turned 13 three days before Mom turned 70. With Andy Mai

ONE OF THE oldest new moms in American history, Aleta St. James was three days shy of her 57th birthday when she gave birth to twins in 2004.

On Monday, the life coach and energy healer celebrated her 70th birthday with a huge cake, an open bar — and zero regrets about her late-blooming motherhood — in a top-floor penthouse of the Kimberly Hotel in Midtown on Monday night.

“I have as much energy now as I did at 40,” St. James said before her party. “I get 5½ hours of sleep max. I’m up at 5:30 making them lunch, getting them dropped off at school. I just keep going.”

In a delivery for the record books, the Nov. 9, 2004, births of Francesca and Gian made St. James the oldest woman in the U.S. to hit that medical milestone. The Daily News featured her pregnancy on its front page.

“They’re truly miracle kids. She was really focused on making this happen,” said Lauren Sliwa, 47, her adopted daughter. “There was a time where I was saying, ‘You gotta be kidding, 57 years old?’ ”

But it is becoming less of a novelty for women over 50 to have children, records show.

There were 754 babies born to women 50 and over in 2015, compared with just 144 in 1997, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Now, St. James, who lives with her children in Hell’s Kitchen, gives advice to other women seeking to have children later in life.

“I’ve got many, many successes in my practice with women becoming pregnant up to 44 and 45,” she said. “They really have a deep desire for motherhood.”

St. James, the sister of Guardian Angel and radio host Curtis Sliwa, hopes her life as a single mother inspires others. “A lot of women who hit 50 feel like it’s over,” she said.

As for motherhood, stopping her teens from spending all their time on their phones and surfing the web has been one of her big challenges. But Gian said his mom is the real cell phone junkie of the family. “She’s glued to the phone. She watches YouTube videos all the time on it,” he said, though he boasted that he needed to help his mom and sister navigate today’s technology. Francesca disagreed. “Oh no, I’m like the technology expert in the family,” she said.

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