World’s Oldest Mother Dies at 69
You may remember when I wrote about women of retirement age having babies and the risks associated with that. Well, the worst that could have happened HAS happened–one of the world’s oldest mothers, Carmen Bousada, died last week.
Beginning in 2005, Bousada underwent hormone treatments to reverse nearly 20 years of menopause and sold her house to pay for in vitro fertilization at the Pacific Fertility Clinic in Los Angeles. She told the clinic she was 55 — the facility’s maximum age for single women undergoing the procedure. When her sons were born in December 2006, Guinness World Records said she was the oldest woman on record to give birth.
Shortly after giving birth to twin boys in 2006, Carmen became ill with cancer. Several news sources are reporting that she passed away due to ovarian cancer, while Bousada herself reportedly said that she has stomach cancer.
Carmen once said: “Often circumstances put you between a rock and a hard place, and maybe things shouldn’t have been done in the way they were done, but that was the only way to achieve the thing I had always dreamed of, and I did it,” she said.
Her dream may have been achieved, but now her children are motherless. You can’t replace your mother. Is it fair that she got to live out her dream and now her children will grow up motherless? They’re not even three years old yet. Most likely, they will remember very little about her. They will only have photos and newspaper articles to remember her by.
Speaking to a Spanish TV show on the eve of her death on July 12 she said: “I have no regrets. I am calm because I see the children are happy. I’m happy because the children are my life. I would like to have done more things. I’m not afraid of what’s going to happen. I just don’t want to go yet. I would like God to have left me the way I was, before I was ill, so I could have enjoyed a few more years with my sons. But knowing they will be looked after by my family does give me peace of mind.”
I hope it did give her peace of mind before her death, but even more than that, I hope her children grow and find happiness in the tragic situation their mother put them in.
Image/Source: dailymail, associated press
