http://www.theage.com.au/...85905.html

60-year-old woman redefines old age, with twins

A 60-YEAR-OLD New Jersey woman has become the oldest in the United States to give birth to twins after delivering two sons.

"Baby A" and "Baby B" were delivered by Caesarean section on Tuesday, weighing about 2.4 kilograms each, in Hackensack.

"Age is being redefined all the time," the mother, Frieda Birnbaum, told a television reporter attending the birth. "I don't feel like 60. I don't know what 60 is supposed to be."

Mrs Birnbaum, a psychologist, and her husband, Ken, a Manhattan lawyer, have been married for 38 years.

They have three other children: two sons, aged 33 and 6, and a daughter, 29.

Managing a pregnancy in a woman of Mrs Birnbaum's age was uncharted territory, said Dr Abdulla al-Khan, an obstetrician and director of perinatal diagnostics and therapeutics at Hackensack.

The twins were delivered at almost 36 weeks of gestation. They are expected to stay in the hospital for three days.

Mrs Birnbaum underwent in-vitro fertilisation last year at a centre in Cape Town, South Africa, that specialises in older women.

She said she wanted her youngest son to have siblings closer to his age, and wanted to remove some of the stigma in older women giving birth.

The oldest woman in the world to give birth to twins is Carmen Bousada Lara, a Spanish woman who delivered twin boys last December, just one week shy of her 67th birthday.

today really isn't a banner day for GD threads, is it?

According to the NY Daily News, her 29-year-old daughter & 33-year-old son aren't happy with this. They're worried about having to take care of those kids when Mom goes.

This shit's WRONG.

Selfishness, pure and simple. She's put her own health at risk and the health of her twins at risk and spent God knows how much money on medical treatments, and for what? So she could pump out a pair of biological offspring at an unnatural age. She'll be collecting pension by the time those boys are in kindergarten, and might pass away before they even leave high school, leaving her older children to most likely care for them.

What about when those kids hit the toddler years and become hell on 4 legs? Can her 60 year old self maintain the energy to properly take care of and keep up with them?

If she needed to look after something that badly, she could've volunteered at a Boys and Girls club, or babysat her grandkids or neighbours kids, or fostered children, or hell, gotten a dog!


Stupidity should be painful.

Althom is 60?

meow85 said:

Co-sign.

Teacher said:

I understand that the need to have children is very strong in a lot of people, and not having been in a position yet where I'd tried for pregnancy and couldn't do it, maybe I shouldn't judge. But I don't understand why so many people spend what amounts to their life savings sometimes on intrusive procedures that aren't even guaranteed to work, when they could adopt. There are hundreds of thousands of existing children here and around the world desperately in need of a family. What's wrong with taking one of them? A few years down the road when I've got the money and my act together, I plan on adopting at least one kid, even if I am able to have my own.

meow85 said:

I understand this too but she'd already HAD 2 kids! I think it's wrong to these kids because they'll have to look after their own mother before they're very old and it's not fair to them. I also wholeheartedly agree with you on adoption, there are already so many unwanted babies. I don't want babies but if I did I'd adopt.

Teacher said:

I agree

There is a reason they can't do this naturally

Teacher said:

i have to admit, sometimes this thread got bumped up close to the "althom has twins!" sticky thread, and for one hot second, i would get really confused.

Birth defects go up with old mommies, too.