GALICIA doctor Lina Álvarez left hospital last night with her new baby girl, and says she hopes her experience of pregnancy at age 62 will encourage other women to 'realise their dream' of motherhood without worrying they have left it too late.
Dr Álvarez, because of her profession, knew the risks involved in having a child 20 years after the menopause, and had to search hard to find a private IVF clinic willing to take them on.
But she says it was nature that made it work, since if she had not been healthy enough to carry a child, her body would not have allowed her to do it.
Baby Lina – who shares her mother's and late grandmother's name – was born by programmed Caesarian section at the hospital in the family's native city of Lugo after a 'completely normal' pregnancy during which Dr Álvarez said she had been in the peak of health and mental wellbeing.
In fact, she said the pregnancy hormones meant she was happier and healthier during the eight-and-a-half months she was expecting than she had been before.
Her second child, a boy, was born via IVF when she was 52, and her first child, also a son – who has cerebral palsy – came into the world when Lina was 35.
Now recovered and at home with her new daughter, Lina says she is the happiest she has ever been.
“Nature is very wise, and it's nature, not gynaecologists, which sets the limits,” she told reporters outside the hospital.
“I've shown you can have a baby at an advanced age as long as you take care of yourself and you're healthy enough.
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