By Ode Idoko, London.
In what seems strange, a woman gave birth to twins in Lagos, Nigeria at 68. Margaret Adenuga went through three previous IVF procedures before finally having twins, her husband, Noah Adenuga, 77, told CNN.
According to interview monitored by Sahelian Times in London, the couple, got married in 1974 and had to wait for 47 years before having their first children. With the desire to have a child of their own, the happy father said they never gave up, even after the failed attempts. “I’m a dreamer and I was convinced this particular dream of ours will come to pass”, he said.
The babies were delivered via Caesarean section at 37 weeks last Tuesday at Lagos University Teaching Hospital, but the hospital only recently made the news public to give the first-time mother time to recuperate it, Dr. Annihila Okinawa, who delivered the babies, said.
“Because of her age as an elderly woman and a first-time mother, it was a high-risk pregnancy and also because she was going to have twins, but we were able to manage her pregnancy to term”. Because of her advanced age, Okinawa assembled a special team of doctors to monitor her pregnancy. Remarkably, she nearly made it to full term, delivering at 37 weeks. Doctors waited one week as she recovered to announce the news publicly. Adenuga isn’t the only woman in her 60s to give birth.
Similar news came out of China recently, when a woman at 67, Tian gave birth to a healthy baby girl. However, in that case, doctors were even more stunned because Tian claimed she conceived naturally, only undergoing self-administered Chinese fertility treatments. The woman’s doctor later told CNN that the mother’s Ovaries, appeared to be that of a woman more than 20 years her junior. They hadn’t shrunk like a 60-year old’s Ovaries would have, which might explain how she got pregnant naturally.
Dr. Liu Wen Chang, who was in charge of the delivery, said at the time. We were quite lucky given that the mother was at an advanced maternal age and had a variety of complications.
Okayano, Wu said. Even though older women are able to conceive through IVF, doctors must lay bare the medical risks associated with being pregnant at that age. There are age-related medical complications that come with being pregnant at that age, such as the baby being born preterm.
While it might seem to be scientifically impossible, many women in advanced age still give birth. According to research published in the American Journal of Public Health, women who are over 25 when they first give birth are 11% more likely to live to 90 compared to women who give birth younger than 25. Of course, this may have less to do with physical health and more to do with the social factors also involved with teen and very young adult pregnancy.
