While Xinju Tian and Maria Rosaria Veneruso are significantly older, Dawn Brooke is widely recognized as the oldest confirmed women to conceive naturally. Brooke became pregnant when she was 58 and then gave birth after she had turned 59.
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 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.
Getting Pregnant After 50
If you are trying to get pregnant after age 50, you will probably need some fertility help. While it's not impossible to become pregnant naturally at 50, it is very rare. Women are born with all of the eggs they will ever have.
Contrary to popular belief, it is actually possible, in some cases, to conceive naturally after the age of 60. Although most women will have gone through menopause by this point in their lives, a small percentage do so between the ages of 60 and 65.
By age 30, fertility (the ability to get pregnant) starts to decline. This decline happens faster once you reach your mid-30s. By 45, fertility has declined so much that getting pregnant naturally is unlikely.
Although pregnancy after menopause is very rare, it can lead to vaginal bleeding like pregnancy in reproductive years. Thus, when women refer to clinics or hospitals with complaints of postmenopausal bleeding, the possibility of pregnancy should be included in the differential diagnosis by physicians or midwives.
Consultant Obstetrician-Gynaecologist… 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.
Susie and Tony Troxler became first-time parents at 50 and 61. They say their daughter Lily is the poster child for hope. Their fertility journey is inspiring people everywhere.
Pregnancy after age 45 years is infrequent and the mother and baby should be considered as a high risk. There is a greater incidence of spontaneous abortion, gestational trophoblastic disease and chromosomal abnormalities in the fetus.
In both cases, the children were conceived through IVF with donor eggs. The oldest verified mother to conceive naturally (listed currently as of 26 January 2017 in the Guinness Records) is Dawn Brooke (Guernsey); she conceived a son at the age of 59 years in 1997.
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.
But none of them come close to the number one spot, held by Ramjit Raghav, who became a celebrity when he fathered his second son at the age of 96 in 2012, becoming the oldest father in the world.
According to Guinness World Records, the oldest father who had the documentation to prove it was Australian Les Colley, who in 1991 fathered a son with his third wife when he was 92. Here are some other notable men who had their mojos working well into their golden years.
You're also more likely to have your baby early if you're over 35 (Fretts 2018b, Lean et al 2017). Babies who are born early or with a low birth weight are more likely to need extra care straight after birth.
What is the longest recorded human pregnancy? The longest recorded human pregnancy was 375 days, or just over 12 months. The baby was born at nearly 10 pounds and was healthy. The mother, Beulah Hunter, was a 25-year-old teacher from Los Angeles and the father was her husband.
“It's exceptionally rare for patients to get pregnant naturally at 50 or over 45. They make history,” said Dr. David Keefe, an obstetrician-gynecologist and fertility researcher at New York University. In part that's because around age 50, many women are entering menopause, after which egg harvesting isn't possible.
Can you have a normal, healthy pregnancy at 45? Yes. Assuming you have top-notch prenatal care during your pregnancy, you eat well and have a healthy lifestyle, you take care of yourself during your nine months, and you come into your pregnancy as healthy as can be, your pregnancy can be problem-free.
Pregnancy in Your 40s
If you get pregnant after 35 years old, experts call this an “advanced maternal age” pregnancy. But it's still possible to get pregnant and deliver a healthy baby in your 40s. Childbirth at older ages has become more common too. Since the 1990s, birth rates in people aged 40-44 have gone up.
When you reach postmenopause, your hormone levels are no longer suitable for ovulation and natural pregnancy, and birth control isn't necessary anymore. However, there is still a chance you could get pregnant—through in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF after menopause has proven to be successful in many cases.
After menopause, a woman's hormonal levels are too low to support natural conception. However, after menopause, pregnancy is possible via IVF. She can use donor eggs or her eggs if she had them frozen.
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.
Yes, you still need to use condoms after menopause if you are not in a monogamous relationship. In a monogamous relationship, you and your partner have sex only with each other and no one else.