Pregnancy terminations in her twenties left Adriana Iliescu with a life of regret and yearning for a child. She talks to Monica Petrescu after becoming the world’s oldest mother at 66 last week

The 66-year-old woman who recently became the world’s oldest mother revealed that she had two abortions as a young woman and deeply regretted having to wait another 40 years to become a parent.

Adriana Iliescu, a professor of literature at Romania’s largest private university, the Hyperion, in Bucharest, gave birth to her daughter, Eliza Maria, after undergoing fertility treatment.

Speaking for the first time from her bed at the Panait Sarbu Hospital in Bucharest, she said she had become pregnant twice in her early twenties during a failed four-year marriage.

Birth control

Iliescu said the pregnancies were terminated because that was a routine method of birth control in her country at the time. She added, however, that she had spent most of the rest of her life wishing that she had a child.

“I got married when I was only 20 and still a student. My husband was also still a student at the atomic physics university back then, and the marriage didn’t last long. We divorced four years later.

“In that time I had two pregnancy terminations - it was the normal thing back then. If there is anything I regret then it is those terminations, not having a baby now.’’

Iliescu gave birth January 16, seven weeks early, after undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF). She was originally carrying triplets, but one died at 10 weeks and another earlier this month. Her doctors then decided to induce the delivery of her remaining child.

Iliescu’s daughter weighed 3 pounds at birth and was being fed with a glucose solution in an incubator. She will not be moved until she gains at least another two pounds.

As she rested in her bed, Iliescu spoke about the extraordinary joy she had felt when she looked at her baby and touched her for the first time. “It was the happiest moment in my life. She grabbed my finger with her tiny hand and held it - it was a gift from God.’’

Once Eliza Maria has grown enough to leave the hospital, Iliescu will take her daughter home to her tiny 10th-floor flat in Bucharest.

Both her parents died recently in their 90s and she lives alone. She intends to carry on working because her monthly income will fall if she retires and takes a pension.

Iliescu, who has continued marking exam papers while in hospital, has arranged for a nurse to become her nanny and help care for her daughter.

Medical debate

Disclosure of her personal circumstances has renewed debate over the lack of checks carried out by medical staff.

In a prepared statement, Save the Children Romania said that doctors had “not given a single thought before the fertilisation procedure to the baby - about where she will live and grow up.

“Our vision, as well as the law, state clearly that the interests of the child take priority - and that the child should have a chance to grow up in a family that is able to take care of her and protect her until she reaches 18. This was not taken into account at all in this case.’’

Iliescu said, “During this time I never gave up my faith in God and in the power of trying to realise one’s dreams.’’

Her attempts to have a baby began in earnest in 1995 when, aged 57, she heard about the first in vitro fertilisation in Romania and visited Ioan Munteanu, the doctor in charge of the procedure, in the western town of Timisoara.

Dr Munteanu said: “She came to me saying that what she had read of my work had given her hope again. She was more tenacious than any other person I’ve ever seen. She wanted more than anything to have a baby.

“The procedure was successful and her first IVF pregnancy went well until March 2000,’’ said Dr Munteanu.

“When she reached the fourth month, the embryo stopped its development and we had to terminate the pregnancy. I recommended that she make a new attempt in Bucharest and sent her back there.’’

Dr Bogdan Marinescu, the Bucharest doctor who supervised Iliescu’s successful pregnancy, declined to comment on the ethical questions thrown up by the birth.

Biologically right

“She was in the right condition to carry a pregnancy,’’ he said. “From a biological point of view, Iliescu proved that she could carry a pregnancy to term.’’

He added that there was no evidence to suggest that the loss of the other foetuses was related to her age. “This happens even with younger mothers with multiple pregnancies.’’

Romanian fertility clinics are now bracing themselves for a wave of applications following Iliescu’s case. A spokesman at one clinic, in the Giulesti Maternity Hospital in Bucharest, said that calls had already been received from people in Britain and Italy inquiring about possible treatment.

Romanian law

“Under Romanian law a woman can continue to receive fertility treatment right up until she has menopause. In many cases though we can help a woman to comply with this by putting the menopause on hold with a special treatment.

“The basic question is that if a woman is able physically to have children, then she is eligible for fertility treatment. This means a woman of 60 who has not gone through menopause can come here for treatment, wherever she is from,’’ the spokesman added.

The arrival of Iliescu’s baby is perhaps the most striking illustration of the acceleration of IVF treatments since 1978, when Louise Brown became the world’s first test-tube baby’ after a successful procedure was carried out at a clinic in Cambridgeshire.

Since then 68,000 babies have been born in Britain through IVF and more than a million worldwide.

© The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2005