A 70-year-old woman in Uganda gave birth to twins after receiving fertility treatment that made her one of the oldest new mothers in the world.
Safina Namukwaya gave birth to a boy and a girl on Wednesday via Caesarean section at the hospital in the capital, Kampala, where she had been receiving in vitro fertilization treatment, said Arthur Matsiko, spokesman for the International Facilities Center at Women’s Hospital.
“She is healthy. She is talking. She is walking if they tell her to walk around the hospital,” Matsiko said of Namukwaya, who had given birth to a daughter at the same facility in 2020, when she was around 60, after IVF treatment.
Namukwaya used a donated egg and her partner’s sperm to conceive the twins, Dr Edward Tamale Sali told BBC News, touting the babies’ arrival as an “extraordinary achievement”.
The twins were born prematurely at 31 weeks gestation and were placed in incubators, but were said to be in good health.
Despite being born prematurely, the twins are said to be in good health. Bukedde 1
Namukwaya is the oldest woman to give birth at the Kampala hospital, which specializes in helping couples struggling with fertility.
“At 70 years old, they consider me weak, incapable of getting pregnant and giving birth, or taking care of a baby, and here is the miracle of twins,” the new mother told AFP.
Before welcoming her first child three years ago, Namukwaya said she had been labeled a “cursed woman” in her rural community for not being able to get pregnant.
Namukwaya was receiving in vitro fertilization treatment with a donor egg and her partner’s sperm. International Women’s Hospital and Namukwaya Fertility Center had her first child when she was in her sixties, also with the help of IVF treatment. International Women’s Hospital and Fertility Center
Her husband died in 1992, leaving her without children, and she met her current partner in 1996.
Namukwaya criticized her partner for not visiting her in the hospital, speculating that he might be upset because she gave birth to twins.
“Men don’t like to be told that they are pregnant with more than one child. Since I came here my man has never shown up,” she lamented.
This is not the first time that a woman beyond the traditional childbearing age has become a mother. In 2019, a 73-year-old woman in South India gave birth to twin girls after receiving IVF care.
With postal cables
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Source: vtt.edu.vn