Mother At 72! This Is What Irresponsible & Ill-advised Looks Like

How old is too old to make a baby? Should a 72-year-old get IVF treatment in the first place?

Women give birth all the time.

This isn’t the stuff of what international headlines are made of. Unless of course you are 72-year-old Daljinder Kaur or her 75-year-old husband, Mohinder Gill, who became first-time parents through IVF in Punjab.

But is that a good thing?

The average life expectancy of an Indian woman is 68 years. The news sparks an intense debate on how old is too old to have a baby? With advances in medical technology, older pregnancies are now a possibility but doesn’t nature put an end to fertility for a reason? Is it ethical to cross the line for a doctor and help a couple of 70 plus years give birth?

The Risks Involved For the Mother

According to reports, Daljinder Kaur experienced menopause 20 years ago. There should be little or no discussion on the ethics of septuagenarian pregnancy but just how risky is it?

According to doctors, a pregnancy above the age of 50 comes with a huge risk of:

• Premature birth
• Underweight babies
• Diabetes
  
• Hypertension
  
• Severe bleeding &
  
• Placenta trivia - a life threatening condition
  

Precisely why the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) says, the combined age of a couple aspiring for a child through IVF should not exceed 100 years. The combined age of the Punjab couple is 150 years.

Dr Anoop Gupta, one of the top IVF specialists in the country, says he only considers couples with at least 25 years’ life expectancy left for fertility treatment. He repeatedly gets IVF requests from couples in their 50s who yearn to have a baby but doesn’t believe in extending the treatment to women older than 45 years.

When couples love each other, they naturally want to have a baby but a pregnancy after 50 or 55 years is not without consequences, a woman can bleed to death during the delivery and a 101 other things can go wrong. At 72, Daljinder Kaur could’ve suffered a heart attack on the delivery table. 

Dr Anoop Gupta, IVF Specialist

When it comes to motherhood, age is as important as the physical condition of the mother.

What About the Child?

The Punjab case has become an overnight sensation, from both the medical and ethical point of view it oversteps the mark.

Sure science helped her overcome menopause but the big worry is for the newborn. How will the baby cope with a mother who is the age of a grandmother and physically looks as unfit as a great-grandmother?

After the age of menopause, which in our country is around 48, a woman stops producing children. Therefore, probably nature meant it that a woman should not have a child. The questions is, if a woman of that age has a child, how long is she going to be around to look after her child?

Dr Duru Shah, IVF Expert

I know I’m being harsh, but the word selfish comes to mind. In India, the loose ICMR guidelines on artificial reproduction allow many clinics to exploit the upper age limit of IVF, set at 45 to 50 years for women.

Her case has thrown up many questions about when it might no longer be responsible for a woman to get pregnant. But this isn’t the first such case:

The Doctor Is To Be Blamed Too!

Undoubtedly the doctors must have been thrilled at their success in reversing menopause and making headlines around the world after making a woman in her 70s deliver. But did they really think of the repercussions of this?

Sure, it is not illegal in India to let a patient undergo a critically dangerous procedure at such an age because of our non-existent reproduction laws. According to the Federation of Gynaecology Society India, children who lose their mothers in the first 3 years of life are at 4 times the risk of premature death than their counterparts.

Perhaps, doctors should take counseling upon themselves and tell couples above the age of 50 or 55, that ‘well, you wanted to be a parent but that ship has sailed!’

And yet, there are some who argue that motherhood is a constitutional right, if the parents are aware of the potential risks and still want it, we should just offer them our congratulations and best wishes.

Daljinder Kaur, her predecessors Rajjo Devi and Bhateri Devi, risked their lives to fight the stigma of being barren. That pain is something many of us with kids will never understand. But theoretically, a woman old enough to be a great-grandmother shouldn’t be given the option of becoming a mother to just fight off the stigma. What about the obvious tragedy of dying before your child turns 2?