72-year-old Punjab woman delivers first baby through IVF

A 72-year-old woman, Daljinder Kaur, from Punjab delivered her first baby on April 19, 2016 through the in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) technique. Kaur has been married for 46 years to Mohinder Singh Gill and the couple had almost given up hopes of having a child.

Kaur had approached the National Fertility and Test Tube Baby Centre in Hisar district of the neighbouring Haryana state after she saw a newspaper advertisement in 2013, the Hindustan Times reported. Kaur and her husband regularly travelled to Hisar for three years and underwent two failed IVF cycles. However, she conceived last year.

In 2006, the same IVF Centre in Hisar had successfully helped another 70-year-old woman deliver her child. A 66-year-old woman had also delivered triplets through IVF at this facility.

"Our track record in handling IVF in older women has been fairly good, but not everyone is fit to conceive. In Kaur's case, she looked visibly frail too, so I had to refer her to a cardiologist to get clearance for the procedure and a battery of other tests to ascertain fitness levels," Anurag Bishnoi, an embryologist and the owner of the IVF centre, was quoted by HT as saying.

He said Kaur could have conceived successfully earlier if her problem was detected. "Her fallopian tubes were blocked and no attempt was made to detect the cause when she was menstruating. The procedure could have worked better then had efforts been made," Bishnoi added.

Kaur's husband, however, told the daily that he had been busy with legal disputes for a long time due to which he could not get his wife treated properly. It was only after the dispute got settled that they tried hard to conceive.

Meanwhile, Kaur is elated to have her first child after a long wait. She was quoted by the AFP as saying that with her first child born, her life is complete now.

"God heard our prayers. My life feels complete now. I am looking after the baby all by myself, I feel so full of energy. My husband is also very caring and helps me as much as he can," Kaur told AFP.