Talk:Pregnancy over age 50

Oldest biological mother

Who is the world's oldest established genetic mother i.e. using her own eggs? From this list it appears to be Aracelia Garcia at 54. Fionah 09:15, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not certain. Of course, a woman can undergo in-vitro fertilization using her own eggs, so, unless it says so explicitly, it doesn't necessarily mean that those women who are said to have become pregnant as a result of IVF treatments did so by using donor eggs — at least for women in the early-to-mid 50s bracket, due to later onset of menopause. A good place to look for candidates for the oldest biological mother would perhaps be world records from the period before IVF (1978) and other fertility treatments. -Severa (!!!) 09:33, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

It would be helpful if we can make this more clear. Sylvain1972 15:52, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

According to the Guinness Book Of World Records, the oldest woman on record to have conceived with her own egg and carried a baby to term was 57 years and 120 days old. The Portland, Oregon woman gave birth to a daughter in 1956 long before medicine figured out a way to reset the clock using donor eggs. There have since been many women age 57 giving birth with their own eggs not in the Guinnes Book of World Records. It is hard to know just who it may be.

I also found: Pregnancy after fifty: profile and pregnancy outcome in a series of elderly multigravidae. Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Leicester, UK. The median age at booking was 52 (range 51-59 years) and the median parity was nine.

However, I have collected stories of women having spontaneous pregnancies up to their 60's, but only have their word, nothing official to prove it.

Pregnancy Stories By Age [1] --Scarletrosepetals (talk) 16:01, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Article retitle?

I think that this article has expanded beyond a simple list: it now has an introduction which explains some medical concerns and also a "Debate" section. What do you think of potential titles such as "Pregnancy among women over age 50" or "Pregnancy over age 50?" -Severa (!!!) 09:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

over age 35 is associated with ...

In the first couple sentences of this article we find: "Pregnancy over age 35 is associated with increased risks." Firstly, this has no citation, and that should be enough to think about erasing it. Secondly, it's one of those statements which are easy to say and hard to disprove. Risks of what? and especially, how much higher?

Let us call to mind that when we say that, for example, "a risk doubles", it sounds very important, but if this could mean passing from 0.0001% to 0.0002% OR passing from 5% to 10%, and the two are VERY different concerning impact on the population.

I think these "easy to say" and non-cited statements which only create unjustified alarm are not in the Wikispirit. Thanks, S.PECA

Complications of age and pregnancy.

The article states that "the risk of genetic defects (for offspring of older men) is greatly increased due to the paternal age effect". This sentence is linked to the Wikipedia article on "paternal age effect" but that article does not seem to substantiate "greatly increased" at all. Please reference a specific section of the article which substantiates "greatly increased" or some other reliable source. The statement following this, "Pregnancy over age 40 is associated with increased risks" is exceptionally vague. Increased risks to who, mother, child, father, doctor? What kind of risks? Physical, mental, financial? How increased? a little, some, a lot? This claim also needs a reliable source. Rgr09 (talk) 05:50, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Article Needed - Natural Fertility Rates by Age

A good wikipedia article would be rates of natural fertility by age. Showing a graph for each year not just 45-49, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.175.124.153 (talk) 01:05, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Verification/cites for after-50 mothers in table

This page does a major disservice to readers. With flimsy and in some cases nonexistent citations to sources, it perpetuates the myth that women's fertility can reasonably be expected to last well into one's 40s and beyond, whereas a cursory search on PubMed or in gynecology-related medical journals would quickly disabuse you of that notion. The cites for most of the mothers listed in the table do nothing to confirm what is--given the topic of this page--the KEY FACT listed: whether the child was conceived with the mother's own egg at her current age (see (2) below for an explanation of what I mean by "at her current age"). Some of the mothers listed don't even have cites (e.g., Annie Leibovitz), so I have to question why they were included at all.

Most of the mothers reported as natural conception or own-egg IVF are suspect for three simple reasons:

(1) As a practical matter, we cannot verify these claims. Most people who use IVF, much less egg donors/sperm donors, are secretive or at least nonpublic about how their children were conceived (by nonpublic I mean their family and friends may know, but they don't usually announce it to the world). We have no way of verifying claims that a child was conceived naturally, or through IVF with the mother's eggs, because the truth is in the woman's medical records and we cannot access those.

(2) Women who give birth using their own eggs are not necessarily using, for lack of a better word, "current" eggs. A good IVF cycle produces more eggs than you can use; after fertilization the unused ones are frozen for future use. I've seen articles--though again, this can't be confirmed (see reason (1) above)--stating that the twins Celine Dion had at 41 were from embryos frozen during an IVF cycle that she did when she was 35. Embryo freezing has been around since the 1980s and it is entirely possible that some of these mothers over 50 are using embryos frozen when they were still fertile.

(3) The page's list of mothers over 50 who allegedly gave birth through IVF with their own eggs are inherently suspect for three reasons: (i) the "current egg vs. embryo frozen years earlier" issue above--this means that even in the unlikely event that we somehow confirm that she used IVF and her own eggs, we don't know how old she was when she originally produced the egg and thus these listings are at best misleading to the extent they imply that a woman of X age was still fertile; (ii) the fact that apart from one alleged success in a 49-year-old (egg frozen at 48), claimed by the New Hope Fertility Center[1] but to my knowledge not published in a peer-reviewed journal, there has NEVER been a successful IVF in any woman over 46 using her own current eggs. Attempts in that age group have had such dismal results that virtually all clinics in the US, Canada and throughout the EU impose a cutoff of between 42 and 46 years of age,[2] after which they will not treat women with their own eggs because the chance of success is slim to none; especially in the US, where clinics often charge $15,000-$25,000 per attempt, there is a financial incentive for clinics to do IVF on all willing patients, but they still impose age limits because after a certain point own-egg IVF simply does not work.

(iii) Clinics in India (where at least one listed post-50 IVF mother allegedly got pregnant with her own eggs) are notorious for switching eggs and/or sperm without telling the recipients, simply to increase their success rates and customer satisfaction. A nicer way to put that, perhaps, is that Indian clinics "have more mixups" than clinics in Europe and America (for instance: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/985936--after-6-years-and-fertility-mixup-surrogate-twin-can-come-home).

Moreover, the listed natural births that took place in conservative/traditional cultures or in the US/EU prior to 1980-1990 or so also have a built-in weakness: until it became socially acceptable for women to have sex and children out of wedlock, it was not uncommon for the mother of the pregnant woman to claim the child as hers. Actor Jack Nicholson, for instance, grew up with an older sister who turned out--as he discovered many years later--to be his mother; that's how his family avoided the "shame" of his unmarried sister giving birth: they lied to him and the entire world.[3] In more conservative cultures, such as the US and EU prior to about the 1980s, that was the only viable option if the family wanted to keep the baby but the father wouldn't marry the mother.

For these reasons, I think we should present this page very differently if we keep it at all. Specifically, we need to be up front about the fact that we have NO WAY of confirming the vast majority of these claimed natural or own-egg IVF births. And to maintain the credibility of Wikipedia, we should probably also include information that provides a realistic picture of female fertility at various ages (like the January 2011 commenter suggested).

I agree about many of the women on the list being highly questionable cases. Theoretically, a woman can get pregnant until she reach menopause. This typically means somewhere between 40 and 61 in today's Western world. (In areas with a low standard of living or in the historical past girls which had menarche later had an earlier menopause.) In practice, fertility gradually decreases with age. To what extent is an area of active research today.

2015-01-07 Lena Synnerholm, Märsta, Sweden.

[1] http://www.newhopefertility.com/research_and_press/new_hope_fertility_in_the_news/

[2] The NHS in the UK has only just this year (2012) raised the maximum age for IVF treatment from 39 to 42. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2146931/Women-40-free-fertility-treatment-NHS-lifts-age-limit.html The Securite Sociale (NHS equivalent) in France will not cover IVF in women 43 or over. http://www.fivfrance.com/page_quest06.html (in French--see first paragraph in right-hand column).

[3] http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/11/jack-nicholsons-supposed-sister-was-actually-his-mother/

Please see the policies of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. What you say may be true, but most of it is unsourced (WP:V). Furthermore, even if you source your claims, you can't use them in the way you appear to want, i.e: there are some women listed here in the table, but this can't be true because of x or y (even if you find a source that says x and y are true you can't engage in WP:OR and WP:SYNTH to draw such conclusions). Also note that in many cases the claims have been made by living persons and you can't just accuse them of lying (please see WP:BLP). While much of what you say may be true, some of it is very suspect: your claim that data from before 1980-1990 can't be trusted due to mothers of pregnant girls/young women claiming the child to be theirs is simply not true and a wide exaggeration: while historical data regarding births, deaths, registration of children etc, can be problematic and there is no way to truly verify it, to say that this extends to the 1990s is ridiculous. Fist of all, your claim that the extreme stigma on unmarried mothers lasted until so late is not true - that might be the case in some parts of the US, but in much of the EU not; furthermore most women were just having abortions if they didn't want the child; even prior to liberalization of laws (generally in the 70's though it depends by country) abortions were easily available, either through what was legally available (some exceptions to the general laws in certain circumstances) or illegally (illegal abortions were very common and available); and since after World War II or so (even much earlier in some countries) in most Western countries hospital births have been the norm. Secondly, in regard to your claim that this article is leading people to have wrong ideas about fertility: having an article with a list of women who have given birth over 50 or having an article titled List of supercentenarians isn't going to lead people to believe that you should expect to have children at 50 or to live to 110. I will also note that this article discusses fertility issues in the lede, while the article List of youngest birth mothers doesn't touch upon the subject of fertility at all. I'm also not sure that there are so many 'myths' regarding fertility, especially with all the mass hysteria in the media about women 'leaving it too late' and all the campaigns from the ART/IVF industries about how infertility is tearing apart society and has become an endemic problem that is threatening the very existence of the population... Let's be serious here.2A02:2F01:1059:F002:0:0:5679:42AE (talk) 05:32, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Flags

Use of flags for countries, like in similar articles, would be nice and helpful. --Why should I have a User Name? (talk) 21:22, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Moving speculative / uncited info from article space

Age of mother	Date	Mother	Father	Nature of conception	Country	Notes
52 years	1990	Unidentified	Her husband	IVF with oocytes donation	United States	A Californian 52-year-old woman gave birth to a son conceived by IVF using oocyte(s) donation in 1990.
52 years	November 2011	Caroline Lockerman	Anonymous sperm donor	IVF	United States	Caroline Lockerman, of Alabama, gave birth to twin boys on November 22, 2010, at the age of 52, after IVF treatment, fertilized by anonymous donor sperm.
53 years	1866	Unidentified	Her 25-year-old husband	Natural Conception	United States	Married at 52 to a barely 24-year-old man, five years after menopause at the age of 47, an American woman naturally conceived and gave birth to two daughters in two years, in 1866 and 1867, at the age of 53 then 54, was reported.
54 years	1669	Elizabeth Greenhill	William Greenhill, her husband	Natural Conception	United Kingdom	Elizabeth Greenhill, born 1615, who had 39 children with her husband William Greenhill, gave birth to her last child, future London surgeon Thomas Greenhill, in 1669 at the age of 54, having conceived naturally.
54 years	1867	Unidentified	Her 26-year-old husband	Natural Conception	United States	Married at 52 to a barely 24-year-old man, five years after menopause at the age of 47, an American woman naturally conceived and gave birth to two daughters in two years, in 1866 and 1867, at the age of 53 then 54, it was reported.
54 years	2000	Unidentified	Her husband	IVF with oocytes donation	Israel	A 54-year-old Jewish woman of Israel gave birth to a son in 2000, after IVF treatment using oocytes donation, decided after the death of their only son, a soldier.
55 years	1723	Unidentified	Her husband	Natural conception	Germany	Medical books of the 19th century quoted the remarkable reported case of a German woman who became, in 1723, mother of a daughter of her husband by natural conception at the age of 55.
56 years	January 2002	Unidentified	Her husband	IVF with oocytes donation	India	56-year-old Indian woman, from Kerala, southern India, gave birth, by Caesarean section, to a son, early 2002, after IVF treatment with oocytes donation.
57 years	2004	Unidentified	Illegal 15-year-old teenage sperm donor, allegedly	IVF	India	A 57 year-old woman from Jayaprakash Narayan Nagar, in South of Bangalore, Karnataka, India gave birth to a triplet of two boys and a girl. They were a couple who demanded a Brahmin (the caste of literati scholars) sperm donor but could not find any in the government sector but later found a private IVF clinic which accepted sperm donation from youth below 18. The sperm donor allegedly to be said of 15-year-old from Brahmin caste. Although the guidelines proposed by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for sperm donation strictly prohibits engagement of teenagers below 18 years in such activities but the teens and the medical professionals are frequently breaching the law for their respective purposes, the former which aim to earn extra money. The engagement of underage teens in sperm donation in India here is on the rise.
57 years	August 2010	Pamela Butler	Her son-in-law (gestational surrogate)	IVF with her daughter's oocytes (gestational surrogate)	United Kingdom	57-year-old Pamela Butler, of Blackwood, Wales, gave birth to a boy, Josef, in August 2010 via surrogacy. Her 35-year-old daughter, Nichola, had tried to have a baby on her own and failed. Pamela Butler became Britain's oldest surrogate mother.
57 years	November 2011	Unidentified	Her husband	IVF with oocytes donation	United States	57-year-old woman from California, USA gave birth to twin boys in Palm Springs on November 28, 2011.
57 years ½	January 2003	Sandra Lennon	Michaël Lennon, her second husband	Postmenopausal IVF treatment with oocytes donation	United Kingdom	Sandra Lennon of Byfleet, Surrey gave birth to her son Joshua in the beginning of 2003, at the age of 57 ½, after IVF treatment ; she will still have a second son, Alex, by same treatment, in October 2004. Sandra Lennon, who has two adult children from her first marriage, told that she decided to go through IVF after she met her second husband, Michaël Lennon. But later it was revealed that though they are officially married, they have never lived together and Michael did not know that Alex, the second child, had been born until two weeks after the birth.
58 years	1757	Unidentified	Her husband	Natural conception	Prussia	Albrecht von Haller (October 16, 1708 – December 12, 1777), German Swiss anatomist, physiologist, naturalist and poet, reported the case of a German woman who has given birth in 1757 to a daughter naturally conceived with her husband at the age already advanced of 58 years.
58 years	1991	Unidentified	Her husband	IVF using oocytes donation	Denmark	58-year-old Danish woman gave birth to a son in 1991, after IVF treatment with oocytes donation fertilized by her husband's sperm.
58 years	September 1965	Doris Beckford	Her husband	Natural conception	United Kingdom	Doris Beckford of London, England gave birth to her fourth child, after going to the Doctors for amenorrhea and distention of the abdomen, after being told she was suffering from an ovarian cyst and being booked in for an operation for a removal. On arrival to the hospital and just prior to being put under general anaesthetic was examined and was told she was 6 months pregnant. A healthy baby girl was delivered 3 months later.
58 years	October 2001	"Pragna"	Her husband	IVF with oocytes donation	India	"Pragna", 58-year-old Indian woman, from Mumbai, Maharashtra, gave birth to a son, by Caesarean section, in October 2001.
58 years, 8 months	July 1992	Miranda Martino	Her husband	IVF with oocytes donation	Italy	Italian singer Miranda Martino gave birth to a son in early July 1992 after IVF treatment with oocyte donation. Born on October 26, 1933, she was then 58 years and more than 8 months.
59 years ½	1890	Unidentified	Her concubine	Natural conception	United States	Depasse reported the case of an American woman who, widowed at 39 years and menopaused at 49, became pregnant almost miraculously by her concubine just before 59, near 1890, to give birth at the age of 59 ½ to a son, who she had breastfed until 65, that he was 6 years.
61 years	1891	Unidentified	Her husband	Natural conception	United States	Dr. Lovett Dewees reported the case of a woman from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who, in 1891 had, at the age of 61, given birth to a son conceived naturally with her husband.
61 years	February 2007	Unidentified	Anonymous sperm donor	Postmenopausal IVF treatment with oocytes donation	Denmark	61-year-old woman, from Vanlose, Copenhague, Denmark, gave birth to a daughter on February 19, 2007, in Copenhague, conceived by IVF treatment practiced in England, with oocytes donation fertilized by anonymous donor's sperm.
62 years	1860	Unidentified	Her husband	Natural conception	United Kingdom	An inscription on the monument of the St. Peter's Church, in East Oxford, reminds of the death in childbirth near 1860 of a citizen 62-year-old woman, whose little girl had survived.
62 years	April 2004	Amma Bhavani	Her husband	Postmenopausal IVF treatment with oocytes donation	India	Amma Bhavani, of Thiruvananthapuram, southern India, gave birth to a son by Caesarean section on April 12, 2004, at the age of 62, after an IVF treatment with oocytes donation fertilized by her husband's sperm.
63 years	1751	Unidentified	Her husband	Natural conception	Austria	Albrecht von Haller (October 16, 1708 – December 12, 1777), German Swiss anatomist, physiologist, naturalist and poet, reported the case of an Austrian woman who has given birth in 1751 to a son naturally conceived with her husband at the age already advanced of 63 years.
64 years	2009	Unidentified	Anonymous sperm donor	Postmenopausal IVF treatment with oocytes donation	Israel	64-year-old Israeli woman gave birth to a daughter in 2009 after receiving a postmenopausal IVF with oocytes and sperm donations.
65 years	March 2010	Jennifer Hong	Egg donor's Vietnamese husband	Postmenopausal IVF treatment with Vietnamese donor's oocyte	Canada	Jennifer Hong, Canadian of Vietnamese origin aged 65, gave birth to her second child, a son named Marvin, on March 1, 2010 in St. Paul's Hospital (Vancouver) in Canada. She used ovum and sperm donation from a Vietnamese couple in 2009, as her own husband, Huy Hong, being sterile. Of becoming a mother at age 65, she has said, "It doesn't matter how old you are. It just matters that I have a family which I love. My husband, Huy stood beside me all the way and was completely supportive of me." Her oldest child, son Dexter, was 19, born on November 20, 1990.
66 years	June 2010	Bhateri Devi Singh	Deva Singh, her 64-year-old husband	Postmenopausal IVF treatment with oocytes donation	India	Bhateri Devi, previously childless Indian woman, gave birth to triplets, two boys and a girl, in Alewa, Haryana, North of Delhi, at the age of 66, after IVF treatment with oocytes donation. She is the oldest known woman to give birth to triplets.
67 years	2006	Unidentified	Anonymous sperm donor	Postmenopausal IVF treatment with oocytes donation	Serbia and Montenegro	A Serbian woman gave birth in 2006 by Caesarean section to a daughter conceived by postmenopausal IVF treatment, with ovum and sperm donors.
68 years	1753	Mrs. John Delay	Her husband, John Delay	Natural conception	United Kingdom	John Mockett reported the case of Mrs. John Delay, aged 68, who had conceived naturally and gave birth in 1753 to a son of her 70-year-old husband. This report is doubtful.
69 years	January 1863	Unidentified	Her 74-year-old husband	Natural conception	United States	Dr. Wayne McCarthy reported the case of a 69-year-old woman who had conceived naturally and gave birth in January 1863 to a son of her 74-year-old husband, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
69 years	1997	Unidentified	Her husband	Postmenopausal IVF treatment with oocytes donation	Italy	An Italian woman gave birth in 1997 by Caesarean section to a daughter conceived by postmenopausal IVF treatment, with oocyte donation fertilized by her husband's sperm.
70 years	1762	Unidentified	Her husband	Natural conception	Switzerland	Albrecht von Haller (October 16, 1708 – December 12, 1777), German Swiss anatomist, physiologist, naturalist and poet, reported the case of a woman who had given birth in 1762 to a son naturally conceived with her husband at the already advanced age of 70 years.
70 years	1880	Unidentified	Her husband	Natural conception	Germany	Dr Schoepfer reported the case of a German woman who became mother of a daughter in 1880 at the age of 70. This report is doubtful.
70 years	1897	Unidentified	The young man who drove her home one evening	Natural conception	France	A case reported in the Parisian Landernau, but the subject of controversy, that of a woman, in Garches, west of the French capital, who became mother of a son in 1897 at the incredible age of 70, after a night spent with a young man who drove her home after their evening of libation.
71 years	1899	Ann Hughes	Simon Hughes, her 57-year-old husband	Natural Conception	United States	Ann Loney gave birth to her and her third husband's third son, William, in 1899 in Iowa. ---> Several issues: 1) Husbands age seems to be correct, but Ann was born in 1830, and was 69 in 1899. 2) There's no child of the couple in the 1900 federal census. 3) Ancestry is not a reliable source. 4) Not finding a reliable source.
72 years	May 1776	Ellen Ellis	Her husband	Natural conception	United Kingdom	Mrs. Ellen Ellis supposedly gave birth to her 13th child, a boy, on 15 May 1776, in Clwyd, Wales. She was 72 at the time, and in her 46th year of marriage. The child was stillborn. The case is nevertheless highly questionable.
73 years	1865	Unidentified	Her husband	Natural conception	United States	Dr Mayham reported the case of a 73-year-old mother in United States near 1865.
73 years	1939	Pace	Steve Pace, her husband	Natural conception	United States	Mrs Steve Pace, of Rose Hill, Virginia, is reported have given birth to her 17th child, a boy, in 1939, at the extreme age of 73. She was then already mother of 16 children, the last of whom was born twenty-three years earlier. ---> Several issues 1) 1940 census shows the couple in their 60s and no young child 2) Time magazine article about pregnancy is the only source I could find, which seems unlikely if it was true. Removed blog citation