Working mum at 66

A 66-year-old Romanian woman who last weekend became the world's oldest mother has revealed she has no family and will need to continue working to pay the bills at her tiny tenth floor apartment in the capital Bucharest.

Adriana Iliescu who is a professor of literature at Bucharest University earns just 500 euros a month, but if she retires and takes a pension her income will drop to 50 euros.

Two days after the birth staff at the Panait Sarbu Hospital in Bucharest said she had been given exam papers to mark so she did not fall behind, and plans to go back to her office to start work as soon as she is allowed out of hospital.

Mother and daughter will be living on the tenth floor of a block of Communist flats in Bucharest where neighbours refused to discuss the professor's decision to have a child.

As she struggled into a lift with several bags of shopping Monica Dumitrescu said: "Its her own choice, she is well liked here and I dare say she will have a lot of support, but rather her than me."

The professor has arranged for a nurse to become her nanny and help care for her daughter while she is working, but the revelations of her personal situation have renewed debate over the lack of checks carried out by medical staff before they went ahead and helped her to become pregnant despite her advanced age.

In a prepared statement Save the Children Romania said doctors had "not given a single thought before the fertilization 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."

Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu banned contraception and abortion under his regime and when it fell in 1989, and almost 100,000 abandoned children were left in neglected homes and institutions across the country.

Almost 40,000 children remain in the state system, but there have been accusations that the system is corrupt and poorly regulated and babies are being sold to the highest bidders - prompting fears that they were ending up in the human organ trade or with paedophiles.

Romanian authorities are also faced with the phenomenon of the so-called "sewer people". Thousands of children from toddlers to teenagers and in some cases complete families spanning generations, live in the sewers of major Romanian cities.

Leaking heat from poorly constructed underground heating pipes fuelling the city keeps families warm during winter and has allowed mini communities of sewer people to spring up in the last decade.

But speaking to the Sunday Telegraph from her hospital bed this week the professor who describes herself as "deeply religious" and has wanted a child for 30 years, said she had no regrets about the birth.

She said: "During this time I never gave up my faith in God and in the power of trying to realise ones dreams.

"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 and the accepted form of contraception. If there is anything I regret then it was those terminations, not having a baby now. Religion was not a big part of many people's lives and I had never had any religious education, I believed the party line that a foetus is only considered life when it is older than three months. In those days I would never have thought of a termination as murder as I do now."

After her marriage she discovered religion and never married again, although for 30 years she has wanted a child.

Professor Iliescu gave birth last Sunday seven weeks early - and the baby has been in an incubator ever since where she will remain until she gains at least another two pounds. After that doctors say there is no reason why they will not let her go home with her mother.

She was due to deliver next month and had originally been carrying triplets but one foetus died at ten weeks and another earlier this month, after which doctors decided to induce the birth of her remaining daughter.

Ms Iliescu said the moment she looked at her baby and touched her properly for the first time was almost beyond words. "It was the happiest in my life. She grabbed my finger with her tiny hand and held it - it was a gift from God."

The child is being fed with a glucose solution for now, doctors said, but will soon be fed with milk. Ms Iliescu is not expected to leave the hospital until next week at the earliest.

After her daughter named Eliza Maria was born Professor Iliescu described her as "my little miracle".

She said: "Having a child was always in my mind but I was not thinking about this as a priority when I was in my 20s".

She will however have to raise the baby on her own. Both her parents who were in their 90s died recently, and she does not have a partner - only a nanny.

Doctor Bogdan Marinescu, who headed the team who helped the woman realise her ambition, said: "Mrs Iliescu told me that this would be the last time she would try have a child of her own. Had she lost the baby this time, she would not have tried again".

Her attempts began in earnest in 1995 when, aged 57, she heard of the first in vitro fertilisation in Romania, and travelled to meet the doctor behind the work in the western city of Timisoara, Ioan Munteanu.

He 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".

Mrs Iliescu underwent IVF treatment before her first attempt to become pregnant. "The procedure was successful and her pregnancy went well until March 2000. When she reached the fourth month, the embryo stopped its development and we had to terminate the pregnancy. I believe her body was not ready for a pregnancy. At that time I recommended she make a new attempt in Bucharest, and sent her to professor Marinescu" Munteanu said.

Dr Marinescu declined to comment on the ethical questions thrown up by the pregnancy.

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

And he said that there was no evidence to suggest that the loss of the other foetuses was related to her age. "This is not something to be blamed on the age of the mother as this happens even with younger mothers pregnant with multiple pregnancies," he said.

After the birth colleagues at the private Hyperion University in Bucharest where Iliescu teaches said they had agreed to adopt the child if anything happened to her mother.

Dean of the Philology Section Nicolae Georgescu said: "Two months ago she told me she was pregnant. When she told me, I announced that there was a future mother among our staff.

"There are many people here who support her, both staff and students, and all these people said they were ready to adopt the child in case something happens to the mother."

Georgescu added that he had talked to Iliescu just after she gave birth and they had discussed the adoption offer.

Meanwhile Romanian fertility clinics are bracing themselves for a wave of applications as a result of the huge interest the case has generated and as women try to beat new legislation expected to be introduced on January 1, 2007, when Romania hopes to join the European Union, setting an age limit of around 50 years of age.

A spokesman at the Giulesti Maternity Hospital in Bucharest said as well as media calls they had taken calls from abroad including the UK and Italy for people interested in receiving similar treatment.

The spokesman who declined to be named said: "Under Romanian law a woman can continue to receive fertility treatment right up until she has the menopause. In many cases though we can help a woman to comply with this by putting the menopause on hold with a special treatment."

"We can offer this service to any woman who wants to pay the costs, which are usually around 2,000 euros - but can be as much as 6,000 euros."

"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 the menopause can come here for treatment, wherever she is from."

Adriana Iliescu had to pay for the treatment herself which was estimated at around 3,000 euros for each time. She originally went to Italy for treatment but had to return home to Romania for treatment because she could not afford it abroad.

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