65-year-old gives birth,sets record

A 65-year-old woman in Israel has just become a mother for the first time. The ultra-Orthodox woman gave birth to a healthy 5.9-pound baby boy this week, reports the Jerusalem Post. Haya Shahar did so thanks to IVF treatment she had outside the country, likely Russia, because Israel forbids the procedure for women older than 54. "We do not recommend this," says Dr. Tal Biron of Kfar Saba hospital. Nevertheless, he added that the baby is "very cute." Shahar's husband is 67, and they'd been trying unsuccessfully to have a baby throughout their 46-year marriage. The Post notes the sperm was either donated or bought, but the hospital won't specify; Haaretz says the couple used a donor egg.

While the delivery (by C-section) makes Shahar the oldest woman to give birth in Israel, it's not a world record. Among the older verified births are one in Spain and another in Romania, both with women who delivered at age 66 after IVF treatments, notes the Mommy Files blog at the San Francisco Chronicle. The oldest woman on record to conceive naturally is a woman in the UK who gave birth at 59, it adds. Shahar and her husband credit a rabbi's blessing for their new son. "The baby is a darling and there is no despair in the world, and the chapter never ends," they said. (A 65-year-old woman in Germany is expecting quadruplets.) 

John Johnson