The oldest recorded mother to date to conceive was 73 years, while the youngest mother was 5 years old. According to statistics from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, in the UK more than 20 babies are born to women over age 50 per year through in-vitro fertilization with the use of donor oocytes (eggs).
Xinju Tian, who was 67 years old when she gave birth in 2023, set a new record for the oldest woman to give birth naturally.
While a 92-year-old woman delivering a 60-year-old baby may sound like a bizarre plot twist from the movie “Benjamin Button,” it's true. Huang Yijun, 92, of southern China, recently delivered a child which she'd been carrying for well over half a century. The baby wasn't alive, however.
BEIJING -- A 67-year-old retired doctor has given birth in China, according to the country's state-run media. China Central Television said the mother might be the country's oldest woman to give birth. The woman, surnamed Tian, gave birth to a girl on Friday at Zaozhuang Maternity and Child Health Hospital.
There is very limited data about men in extreme old age (80 yr and older). Of older men who produce spermatozoa in their ejaculates, sperm motility, a manifestation of viability and fertilizing capacity, tends to be reduced. The ability of men to impregnate their wives gradually reduces from age 25 onward.
While stories about women giving birth in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s make for good headlines, these pregnancies are usually accomplished with donor eggs and in vitro fertilization (IVF). There is no set oldest age when you can get pregnant naturally, but fertility starts to decline as you age.
Estela Melendez said she never knew she had been pregnant
A 91-year-old woman discovered she has been carrying a foetus in her womb for more than 60 years. Estela Melendez, 91, from the small town of La Boca in Chile, was given the news by doctors after having an x-ray following a fall.
Estela Meléndez, 91, says she has had a lump on her belly for many years, but had no idea that she was carrying a fetus. Doctors say it has been in her uterus for over six decades. The fetus is calcified and poses no health risk to the woman.
The website of the world record authority Guinness World Records lists the oldest father ever as Australian Les Colley (1898-1998), who allegedly fathered his ninth child at age 92 with a Fijian woman he met through a dating agency.
Smith's age was disputed; he claimed to have been born in 1849, but other records suggested he may have been 15 years younger. Raghav became the world's oldest father at age 94 when his first child was born in 2010.
A mother has given birth to the 'oldest babies' in the world, after their embryos were frozen for 30 years. Rachel Ridgeway, who gave birth to the twins on October 31, would have been just three years old when Timothy and Lydia were conceived in a US fertility clinic.
The most fertile woman in history is alleged to be an 18th-century Russian peasant called Valentina Vassilyev. Between 1725 and 1765, she is recorded as giving birth to a total of 69 children – 67 of whom survived infancy. This included 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets.
The Guinness World Record for most children born to one mother goes to Valentina Vassilyev, the wife of a Russian peasant Feodor Vassilyev. She birthed 69 babies total in her lifetime.
In 1997, the McCaughey septuplets, born in Des Moines, Iowa, became the first septuplets known to survive infancy. Multiple births of as many as eight babies have been born alive, the first surviving set on record goes to the Suleman octuplets, born in 2009 in Bellflower, California.
Sarah, also spelled Sarai, in the Old Testament, wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac. Sarah was childless until she was 90 years old. God promised Abraham that she would be “a mother of nations” (Genesis 17:16) and that she would conceive and bear a son, but Sarah did not believe.
Kora Duke had her first baby in 2001, at the age of 17. She was then pregnant for most of the next decade, giving birth to her last child in 2012. Now 39 years old, she relishes the large family she shares with her partner of 23 years, Andre Duke, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In 2021, an 11-year-old became what at least one doctor believed to be the youngest person to give birth in the U.K., according to a report by British news outlet The Sun. The girl became pregnant at 10 years old and delivered her child after more than 30 weeks of pregnancy.
In the 1950s, if a woman wanted to know if she was pregnant, she needed to get her urine injected into a frog.
An Indian woman has become the "world's oldest mother" after giving birth to a baby weighing just 1lb 5oz. 75-year-old Prabha Devi welcomed her first child - a baby girl - via C-section last week in Kota's private Kinker Hospital in Rajasthan.
The end of reproductive years is characterized by the cessation of menstrual periods and is known as the frequency of anovulation cycles rose. Although pregnancy after menopause is very rare, it can lead to vaginal bleeding like pregnancy in reproductive years.
A remarkable 20 years after freezing her ovary, a 46-year-old Israeli woman defrosted part of it, reversed her menopause, got pregnant without IVF, and has now given birth to a healthy baby girl. She has named her new daughter Eshkar, a word from the Bible that means gift.
Anthea gave birth to her son, Nicholas Jay, on June 15, 2011. English actress Tina Malone gave birth to a baby girl in December 2013 at the age of 50, after IVF treatment. American singer Sophie B. Hawkins gave birth to a baby girl named Esther Ballantine Hawkins on July 7, 2015, at the age of 50, after IVF treatment.