Pregnant After Fifty?

Hi Ladies.....
I was just surfing the internet and found many sites that talked about women over fifty having babies.  Interesting topic.  Very controversial.  Well, there are many women who for many reasons did not get around to baby making until their fifties.  Some, believe it or not, into their sixties and seventies.  Some women tried to get pregnant for years and it just didn't happen.  Others got married later in life and wanted to have a child with their new husband.  Others just wanted to add to their family.
 Usually by the time we reach fifty we have other things on our minds.  We think about possibly doing the things that we always thought about but were not able to do...... traveling, maybe a hobby, going back to school, starting a business, etc......But for a number of women over fifty having a baby is on their mind.  Of course most women over fifty are through with or going through menopause.  But with recent medical advances in reproduction it is definitely possible for a women over fifty to become pregnant.
There is definitely the argument that there are increased health risks with a pregnancy over fifty.  Also it is said that a mother over fifty would not be able to care for a child the way a younger mother could.  You know, I'm not so sure that I agree with that.  What do you think?  I feel that it is a blessing.  You are giving life to a child.  As long as you give it all your love I don't know that you need to be able to run marathons with him or her.  What greater gift than the gift of life!
There have been governments that have prohibited the pregnancy of a woman over fifty.  In the 1990's France approved a bill that prohibited post-menopausal women from getting pregnant.  A similar situation occurred in Italy.  Italy would not give fertility treatment to women over fifty.  The truth is that there are fertility clinics that will not offer  in vitro-fertilization to women over fifty.
Okay....let's talk about the risks associated with pregnancy over fifty.  They include gestational diabetes, hypertension, miscarriage, low birth weight, premature birth and fetal mortality.  I am sure that these risks are discussed before pregnancy.  I am not against pregnancy over fifty.  For one reason is that it is giving life to a child.  Yes, of course, you want your child to be healthy.  There are tests that are given during the beginning of the pregnancy to rule out problems that might be present.  Yes, then there is the decision to make that if there is a problem whether or not to have an abortion.
Let's look at some cases of pregnancies over fifty.........

1. 1669:  Elizabeth Greenhill, born 1615, who had 39 children, gave birth to her last child, London surgeon,  Thomas Greenhill, at the age of 54.
2. 1880:  Lucy Gauss Kenney, a Confederate veteran, gave birth to her last child at the age of 53.
3. 1997:  Cheryl Fillippini of Lompac gave birth to quadruplets, three girls and a boy, at the age of 50, after IVF.  Fillippini and her husband had 10 children together from their previous marriages, but wanted to have a child together.
4. 1997:  Actress Adrienne Barbeau gave birth to twin sons Walker and William on March 17, 1997, at the age of 51. Barbeau married Billy Van Zandt in 1992 and tried to have a child naturally and then tried in vitro fertilization which failed.  She later became pregnant naturally.
5. 1956:  Ruth Kistler of Portland, Oregon gave birth to a daughter at the age of 57. This was before in-vitro fertilization which makes Kistler one of the oldest women to have conceived naturally.
6. 1997:  Dawn Brooke of Guernsey gave birth to a son at the age of 59.  She is currently the oldest mother to have given birth naturally.  She was taking hormone replacement therapy which might have contributed to her ability to ovulate after menopause and get pregnant.
7. 1996:  Arceli Keh of Highland, California gave birth to a daughter at the age of  63.  She and her husband, Isagani, had been married for 16 years when they decided to have a baby.  In order to be admitted to a fertility clinic Arceli lied about her age and told doctors that she was 50 years old.  It took five rounds of IVF before Arceli got pregnant.  Her husband's sperm fertilized a donor egg.
8. 2004:  Papathiammal Subramaniam of India gave birth to a son at the age of 64.  The sperm of Subramaniam's  74 year old husband was used to fertilize a donor egg.
9. 2009:  Elizabeth Adeney, at the age of 66 gave birth to a son in Cambridge, England.  The child was conceived by IVF from donor eggs and sperm.
10. 2008:  Omkari Panwar gave birth to twins in India at the age of 70.  Omkari already had five grandchildren.  Omkari and her husband used IVF because they wanted  a male heir.

Ladies.......the list goes on and on!  Each person had their own personal reasons to become pregnant after the age of fifty.      What is your opinion?


                                                                                

This is an updated video.  My post was written in 2011

some info taken from wikipedia