A seventy-two-year old Daljinder Kaur delivered a healthy baby boy after 46 years marriage and about 20 years after menopause.
Kaur’s wish to have a child was fulfilled through the in-vitro fertilisation (IVF-test tube) technique, wherein the eggs and sperm are fertilised outside the womb, in a test tube.
Kaur’s 79-year-old husband, Mohinder Singh Gill, had been travelling with her from Amritsar in Punjab to Hisar in Haryana since 2013 to ensure the success of the treatment, according to Hindustantimes.
In July 2015, Kaur finally conceived after two failed IVF cycles.
Embryologist and owner of the National Fertility and Test Tube Baby Centre in Hisar, Dr Anurag Bishnoi, explained that Kaur first came to him alone in 2013, after reading about the centre in newspapers.
Kaur own case is the second at the centre where a 70-year-old woman was delivered of a baby girl successfully through IVF.
Bishnoi said, “Our track record in handling IVF in older women has been fairly good, but not everyone is fit to conceive. In her 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.
“We started work within two months in 2013 but the first attempt failed, which is normal. After six months, another attempt was made and that also didn’t succeed. Finally, the third attempt was successful.”
The husband blames his wife’s inability to have a child on a lack of awareness and a family feud that was on for years because of which they didn’ t get time to see a doctor.
He said, “It was embarrassing to not be able to produce a child, no doubt, but we have been busy with litigation all our life and hardly had time to think it over.
“After we got a little free a few years ago, we thought of trying for a baby. The newspaper article was spotted at an opportune moment.”