A woman in her 70’s delivered a baby in a northern region of India. Daljinder Kaur and her 79-year-old husband of 46 years are now parents following two years of IVF treatment at a clinic in the northern state of Haryana. Despite being under normal weight at just two kilograms (4.4lbs), the baby was healthy according to the National Fertility and Test Tube center.
The 72-year-old mother believed she wasn’t too old to conceive and said she had enough energy to cope despite facing ridicule in a nation where infertility is a religious stigma. Mrs. Kaur said “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,” and “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.”
Mrs. Kaur listed her age at 70, but many people in India don’t have birth certificates with only a rough estimation of their actual age. The clinic released in a statement that she was 72.
Her husband, Mohinder Singh Gill, owns a farm outside of Amritsar. He was untroubled by their age convinced that God would have his way and guard the child.”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,” he said. They named the baby, a male, Armaan.
Dr. Anurag Bishnoi, who runs the fertility clinic said he was skeptical about moving forward with the treatment but tests indicated otherwise that Mrs. Kaur was healthy enough. “I first tried to avoid the case because she looked very frail. Then we made her undergo all the tests and once all the results were okay we went ahead,” he said.
This isn’t the first instance. Another woman, also 72-years-old, from Uttar Pradesh state gave birth to twins in 2008 through IVF treatment. This story was originally reported in Sky News.
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