Oh aby Amumat 64
Birth sets record for Kiwiwomen, writes Lynley Ward
A64-year-old has made New Zealand medical history by becoming the country’s oldest woman to give birth.
The Weekend Herald can reveal the retired Auckland professional delivered her little boy by Caesarean Section at Auckland City Hospital in mid-october.
Previously, the oldest to give birth in New Zealand was aged 57.
The woman, whose identity remains secret to protect her child, travelled to Georgia last year, to one of the few fertility clinics in the world that accepts single women in their 50s and older for treatment.
The baby, who weighed 3.3kg, was the woman’s fifth child, after she gave birth to four in the 80s and 90s. Her previous child was born in 1994.
The woman is relishing having a baby of her own in her arms again, saying he is “truly a gift”.
He will be raised as a regular Kiwi kid with amiddle name that connects him closely to Aotearoa.
The doting mum said she had wanted to have a child for years despite going through menopause. The desire was sparked when an adult daughter was pregnant with her first child and she wanted to experience motherhood once more.
Buoyed by women overseas giving birth in their late 50s, 60s and even 70s she approached Fertility Associates to explore the possibility of having a similar procedure in New Zealand. However, she said she was rebuffed early on after seeing an obstetric physician who did not refer her for further screening.
Rather than lobby her case through the Government-assisted reproductive technology committee, which could have taken years and had no guarantee of a favourable outcome, the determined Aucklander set her sights on international clinics.
She discovered one in Georgia where age was not a barrier to fertility treatment.
Using donor eggs and sperm from two young Georgians, she travelled to Tbilisi for what she anticipated could be a six-month sojourn, in a bid to become pregnant.
“It wasn’t impulsive,” she said. “I had thought about it for four and a half years.”
However, she had decided to keep it a closely guarded secret, choosing not to tell even family members until the second trimester.
“I had this list of everything that could go wrong in my pregnancy in New Zealand from the obstetric physician and Fertility Associates. I thought I’m not going to announce this to anybody until I’m about 24 weeks because I don’t want to then go back and announce that I’ve had amiscarriage.”
Official statistics show about 30 women aged in their 50s have delivered children in New Zealand hospitals over the past three years, though the data does not reveal countries where IVF treatment took place.
Fertility Associates general manager Dr John Feek said while there was no upper limit on fertility treatment, all women aged 45 and over were asked to see an obstetric physician to assess their health ahead of any possible treatment.
Whether it proceeded depended on the advice the clinic received.
To the woman’s delight the blastocyst transfer proved successful on the first attempt and she became pregnant. Her unborn baby developed well inside her post-menopausal womb, meeting expected growth markers throughout the pregnancy.
The cost of the procedure was about $10,000 plus airfares.
“I’ve actually kept a spreadsheet of everything I’ve spent. I’ve probably got one of the
cheapest IVF babies there is.”
The baby was born at 38 weeks and one day, with the pair leaving hospital three days after birth.
But while caring for her little boy had gone without a hitch— including taking him home from hospital on a bus three days after giving birth— the new mum said she was facing an astonishing level of discrimination over her advanced age.
She has already been accused of abducting her infant and followed from the grounds of Auckland City Hospital by a contractor who stopped her from leaving until police arrived. The female contractor believed she was too old to be the infant’s mother and claimed she was struggling to hold the infant.
In a second incident days later, three police and three ambulance officers questioned her as she ate lunch at a cafe after a call from amember of the public. Since that incident, she has been visited by police and Oranga Tamariki at her home.
Shocked by the approaches, the woman is taking her child to her local doctor on aweekly basis for weight checks and blood tests to show he is well cared for.
She also carries the child’s birth certificate and a doctor’s letter explaining the pregnancy with her when she goes out in public.
The grandmother-of-three said she hoped sharing details of her successful pregnancy would go some way to changing the ethical landscape that prevented women over 50 from having babies using assisted reproductive technology.
“I can’t see the reason why women should be obstructed from doing it. They should simply be given the right to give informed consent.
“A woman should be presented with all of these risks and adverse consequences and then be allowed to choose.”
She described being denied treatment in New Zealand as thinly veiled age discrimination, which should be legally challenged under the Human Rights Act and the practice ceased.
“All persons over 40 years of age, not just men, have the right to have a child, and have a right to appropriate health screening to assess their fitness for childbearing, and be offered treatment if the woman gives her informed consent, irrespective of whether or not government funding is offered.”
She said no one gave a second thought to a 64-year-old man having a child and questioned why women were subject to reproductive discrimination.
“Women are living longer. It was sensational when the first baby was born by IVF and after four decades it’s commonplace.
“I realise I’m in my 60s but I don’t think it will be that long before it becomes the social norm for women to be having their family in their 50s.”