Seventy-year-old’s ‘surprise pregnancy’ set to make her world’s oldest mum

A 70-year-old mother who claims she’s pregnant with her eighth child will become the world’s oldest mother if it proves true.

Maria de la Luz from Mazatlan, a city in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, said she was six months’ pregnant with a baby girl and showed off ultrasounds that she said proved her claim, the Daily Mail reported. De la Luz didn’t reveal any details of the pregnancy including whether she had IVF treatment or other fertility procedures, but her comments indicated that she had fallen pregnant naturally and unexpectedly. 

She said she first suspected she was pregnant three months ago. “My legs hurt and I was vomiting and felt dizzy. Now they have done around 10 ultrasounds in a private clinic and in the (public) social security hospital. The doctors could not believe it,” she reportedly told local media.

Other reports in Spanish were slightly different to those in the British newspapers, putting De la Luz’s age at 71 and adding the surname Rodriguez to her full name. According to La Republica, the woman’s children were unhappy about their mother’s alleged condition and were insisting that she attend another appointment with a gynaecologist to confirm that she was indeed pregnant. That appointment is due on July 18, according to the report.

If her claims are true and she does deliver her child, Luz will become the world’s oldest woman to give birth. Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara from Spain, who gave birth at 66 after lying about her age in order to get IVF treatment in the US, currently holds the official title, although Indian woman Daljinder Kauer, claimed to be 72 years old when she gave birth, however her age hasn’t be verified. 

Read more: Britain’s oldest new parents, aged 63 and 65, have baby taken away

The case was getting plenty of attention online on Tuesday , but the woman is far from unusual in having kids later in life. In 2016, a then-62-year-old Tasmania woman became Australia’s oldest mother, after giving birth to a daughter conceived through IVF with her 78-year-old partner.

Another Australian mother, Anthea Nicholas, made headlines in 2011, after giving birth to her now-six-year-old son at the age of 50, having fallen pregnant naturally. Burns told news.com.au that she and her husband were advised by their GP and our obstetrician to terminate the pregnancy. “We had to give it some serious consideration, but [husband] Pete was stronger than I was and felt really blessed,” she said of their decision to continue with the pregnancy.

The increasing trend of having babies later in life is a big change to previous generations. In the 1920s, the most common ages to have babies were between 20 and 29, and that remained the same in until the ’80s. But since then, the age of new mums has been rising, and now the median age for Australian women to give birth is 30.6 years, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Meanwhile, the number of mothers aged 40-44 has tripled over the past 30 years.

What do you think? How old is too old to have a child? Could you handle having a new kid at your age?