India: 72-year-old gives birth to healthy baby boy through IVF treatment

An Indian couple in their 70s had their wish fulfilled of having an offspring when the wife delivered a healthy baby boy after a successful in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment.

After failing to conceive in 46 years of marriage and being abandoned by their adopted son, the 72-year-old woman from the western state of Punjab sought help from the National Fertility and Test Tube Baby centre in Hisar, a city in the neighbouring state of Haryana.

Daljinder Kaur and her 79-year-old husband, Mohinder Singh Gill, had lost all hope of having their own child and were ridiculed in society for their infertility. Gill even had to fight a court battle with his father to inherit some land and property, which he had been deprived of for having no children.

However, the couple approached the IVF clinic after reading about it in an advertisement. After two failed attempts, the septuagenarian finally conceived in July 2015 in her third attempt and then delivered a 4.4lb healthy baby boy in April. The couple have named their baby Arman meaning desire.

Anurag Bishnoi, embryologist and owner of the IVF clinic, told The Guardian that this was not the first such case for his clinic. In 2008, a patient of his called Rajo Devi Lohan was the first to become a mother through IVF at 70. She gave birth to a baby girl. Another woman gave birth to triplets at 66 after a successful treatment at his clinic.

The doctor said that several tests were conducted on Kaur to see if she was fit enough to conceive and deliver a child, which found that the risk to her health of becoming pregnant at this age was no higher than when she had been middle-aged.