Five years ago, Romania’s Adriana Iliescu became the oldest mother in the world. Then she was sixty-six years. Today, at the age of seventy two years she again wants to repeat the experience of 2005 i.e. to get pregnant through get pregnant, ivf, in-vitro fertilization (IVF), reports British paper ‘The Mail’ on Sunday about the woman who is well aware of her age and does not hide the fact that ‘once again she is trying not to look in the mirror.’
Writer and teacher of Romanian literature at the University, Adriana Iliescu, who lives in Bucharest, is more like a great grandmother of her five year old daughter Eliza than like her mother. But the optimistic woman believes that this is not important. She feels that she is 27-37 year old and very healthy. ‘The mirror is unkind to women, but if we are talking about my energy then I feel like a young woman. I feel like I’m 27 and when I feel a bit more tired, I feel like I’m 37. I am healthier than women more than half my age.
She adds ‘People think they are being funny when they call me granny, but I didn’t have Eliza to make me look younger. I never feel my years.’
A spokeswoman for the Romanian intellectuals, who comes from a wealthy family, Adriana married when she was 20 years old. In the first year of her marriage she became pregnant, but doctors advised her to have an abortion because she was diagnosed with TB. She had to agree because she could understand the potential danger to the child. Four years later she divorced her husband. Since then, she did not marry and devoted herself to an academic career and science.
When in-vitro fertilization (IVF) became available in 2000 in Romania, Adriana was already 57 years old. The first attempt to conceive a child this way was not successful and only a few years later she turned to Dr Bogdan Marinescu in Bucharest for treatment, which led to the birth of Eliza.
‘People who criticize me are jealous of what I’ve done with my life. It’s not a small thing to have published 25 books and be a university professor and also to have a child,’ says proudly brave woman, ready for another feat, despite her age.
