A 66-year-old woman has stunned the medical world after giving birth to her tenth child after conceiving naturally.
A 66-year-old woman became a mother of 10 after giving birth again. Credit: Tetra Images / Getty
Alexandra Hildebrandt, who was already raising nine children, welcomed a healthy baby boy named Philipp via C-section at Charité Hospital in Berlin, Germany, just a week ago.
Weighing in at 7 pounds, 13 ounces, the newborn arrived without any complications.
In an interview with TODAY, the 66-year-old German mom insists the pregnancy was completely natural. “I didn’t use fertility drugs,” she said, adding that she conceived her son without in vitro fertilization.
“A big family is not only something wonderful, but above all, it is important for raising children properly,” she added.
Philipp joins his siblings: Svitlana, 46; Artiom, 36; Elisabeth, 12; Maximilian, 12; Alexandra, 10; Leopold, eight; Anna, seven; Maria, four; Katharina, two.
While Hildebrandt says she maintains a healthy lifestyle, regularly walking and swimming, medical experts agree that a pregnancy like hers is incredibly rare, especially without any medical assistance.
Fertility typically begins to decline in a woman’s 30s, with natural conception chances plummeting dramatically by the time menopause hits, usually between ages 45 and 55.
According to Dr. Brian Levine, practice director at New York City fertility clinic CCRM, conceiving and giving birth at Hildebrandt’s age without complications is “incredibly low”.
Experts say the only way women can successfully conceive after menopause is with the assistance of hormones and medical intervention. Credit: Photodisc / Getty
Hildebrandt’s case isn’t the only one defying medical expectations. In 2020 alone, nearly 1,000 women aged 50 and over gave birth in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2023, 70-year-old Safina Namukwaya welcomed twins, a boy and a girl, in Uganda. To conceive, she turned to in vitro fertilization with donor eggs and her husband’s sperm.
Two days after giving birth, Namukwaya said through an interpreter that she was feeling “great,” adding: “Some might argue that 70 years is old, but God decided that I get to have twins at 70…There is no one that can put a limit on God’s authority and power.”
In China, a 67-year-old woman delivered a healthy girl after doctors discovered that, unlike most women in their 60s, she had “ovaries similar to that of women in their 40s,” according to chief physician Liu Chengwen.
“That’s probably one of the reasons she was able to conceive naturally,” Chengwen told state-run CCTV Plus.
