It’s the miracle of birth.
Despite all odds against her, a woman in Germany — who was already a mom of nine — gave birth at age 66 without help from in vitro fertilization.
Fertility begins to slowly decline when a woman enters her 30s, and those odds continue to plummet as the years go on.
And although there are various fertility treatments one can explore to get pregnant, none of them were needed for Alexandra Hildebrandt, who told TODAY that she didn’t use fertility drugs and got pregnant naturally.
Hildebrandt underwent a cesarean section a week ago and gave birth to her 10th baby, a boy, named Philipp, who weighed in at 7 pounds, 13 ounces. Both mom and her newborn are happy and healthy.
“A big family is not only something wonderful, but above all, it is important for raising children properly,” mom-of-10 Hildebrant, whose oldest child is 46 and previous youngest was 2, told TODAY.
Although she described herself as a healthy person who swims and walks regularly, the odds of getting pregnant at her age were still not in her favor.
Experts say the only way women can successfully conceive and give birth after menopause — which normally occurs between ages 45 and 55 — is with the assistance of hormones and medical intervention.
Without the two, the likelihood of a woman Hildebrant’s age not having any pregnancy or birth complications is “incredibly low,” Dr. Brian Levine, a practice director at New York City’s fertility clinic CCRM, told TODAY
Hildebrant is not the only one who has experienced this kind of birth miracle.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2020, there were almost 1,000 births to women 50 and older.
One woman named “Em” gave birth at 51 to two babies while undergoing menopause, while a 67-year-old woman in China previously had a healthy girl.
“When we examined the woman’s reproductive system during her labor, we found that she, unlike most other women in their 60s who have withered ovaries, has ovaries similar to that of women in their 40s,” chief physician Liu Chengwen told the state-run CCTV Plus of the latter patient.
“That’s probably one of the reasons she was able to conceive naturally,” Chengwen said.
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