62-Year-Old Woman Gives Birth, Encourages Pregnancy And Motherhood Late In Life

A 62-year-old Spanish woman gave birth to a baby girl earlier this month. Lina Alvarez of the city of Lugo in northwest Spain, encourages other women who are late in life to have babies so long as they are healthy.

She named the baby after herself. “It’s impossible to be happier,” she told reporters outside Lucus Augusti Hospital Tuesday. Baby Lina, who was born on Oct. 10, was a month premature because of Alvarez’s blood pressure problems. She weighed 5 pounds and 2 ounces at the time of her birth.

Lina’s birth made Alvarez a mother for the third time. Her first child, 27, was born with cerebral palsy. Her second is 10 years old. She became pregnant the second and third time through in-vitro fertilization, according to reports.

While some people might scoff at the idea of being a mother at 62, Alvarez promotes being pregnant after 50.

“I encourage (older women), I really do encourage them - if they have good health - to have a baby when they have a more advanced age. They should have it because Mother Nature is very wise and sets the limits, not gynecologists, it is nature that decides,” she said.

“As you can see this has been a normal pregnancy, which has happened in a natural way, from the second month I didn't need any medication,” she explained. “I have shown that you can have a child when you are of an advanced age, if you are healthy and you look after yourself.”

Alvarez, who is a doctor, said there are other older women who want to be become pregnant but are afraid or uneducated about the possibility of carrying a baby after 50.

“There are many mothers who are wishing (to become pregnant) but don't because they are not well informed or they don't have enough courage,” she said. “But I do encourage them, and I gave them hope that they can fulfill their dreams because this is a dream come true.”

Though not 62, singer Janet Jackson shocked many when her pregnancy at 50 years old was revealed in June. She hasn’t confirmed the pregnancy, but her brother, Jermaine Jackson, gushed about having a new niece or nephew. “I tell her, ‘If you need any parenting skills or baby skills, let me know because I'm the best diaper changer there is on the planet, still to this day!’” he told reporters in June, according to E! Online. “I can't wait to see how this baby is going to look.”

In 2009, Elizabeth Adeney, of Suffolk in the U.K., gave birth to a son at the age of 66.

Earlier this year, an Indian woman gave birth to a first baby in her 70s after IVF treatment.

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