LIZ HAYES: It's no secret women are leaving it later to have children, but 66? That's how old Adriana Illiescu is and she's just had a healthy baby girl, making her the oldest mother in the world far too old, say the experts. Here in Australia, our oldest mum was 53 when she gave birth to triplets. And wait until you see how she's coping. So how old is too old? And what is a fit and proper mother? We decided to investigate, an investigation that took us to three continents, five countries. And in our travels we discovered something else a sinister racket, an international trade in human eggs.
Story name: Never too old
STORY
LIZ HAYES: For millions of people around the world, there's something terribly wrong with this picture. She may look like a proud gran. In fact, Adriana Iliescu is the mother. She's just given birth to daughter Eliza Maria at the age of 66.
ADRIANA ILIESCU (TRANSLATION): I think it's a beautiful gift. My life has been made complete with something that was missing. The emptiness I felt in my life has been filled.
LIZ HAYES: This Romanian university professor is the world's oldest mother. She's just too old. We have to have the courage to say this she's too old and it's selfish.
LIZ HAYES: Miss Iliescu was briefly married in her early 20s but decided not to have children indeed, had two abortions. Now, still single, she's discovered it really is never too late. What do you intend telling your daughter about why you decided to have her at the age of 66?
ADRIANA ILIESCU (TRANSLATION): I will probably break this to her in stages as she is growing up. I'm not worried because by that time she'll also be able to understand my achievements for a lifetime.
LIZ HAYES: It has become a worldwide phenomenon. First-time mothers are getting older, much older. In fact, the number of women giving birth in their 40s has doubled in the last decade. And it's no longer shocking to find mothers in their 50s.
ALETA ST JAMES: I'm an emotional healer and a life coach and I thought, "What is my deepest desire?" And my deepest desire was to have children and to have a family. And so I thought, "You know what, I'm going to go and do that."
LIZ HAYES: Aleta St James simply decided she wasn't ready to have children until she was 56. There's no father or father figure in this household either. But this new age New Yorker had no trouble finding a doctor willing to help.
ALETA ST JAMES: He said, "Aleta, you look young, you have the body of a 30-year-old, you look fabulous, there's no reason why you can't do this, let's go for it."
LIZ HAYES: When people say you look fabulous, you do, but they're talking about something else, though.
ALETA ST JAMES: Physiologically. In other words, you could be ... like, I'm 57 right now but physiologically I'm not 57. My body is, like 35, 40 years old.
"And then we're going to see the dinosaurs at the museum. You'll love those. Those are great."
LIZ HAYES: Twins Francesca and Gian are now four months old and Aleta is coping well with help from her 24-hour-a-day nanny Edna. For Aleta, it's all perfectly natural, even though none of this would have been possible without a willing egg donor.
ALETA ST JAMES: I know that my particular donor was very, very happy. She said that this woman must really want to have children to go through all this and I know she's going to bring up my children very well. And it's a gift.
LIZ HAYES: It is IVF technology that has given women in their 50s and 60s the chance to have babies. But it also requires doctors who are willing to take on much older patients. And the proudest IVF specialist in the world today is the man who engineered Adriana Iliescu's pregnancy, Dr Bogdan Marinescu.
So there's no such thing as too old?
DR BOGDAN MARINESCU: It's very difficult to say 'too old'.
LIZ HAYES: You would do it again?
DR BOGDAN MARINESCU: Maybe yes, maybe not. We'll see.
JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE: What has happened with Miss Iliescu is we've seen her you know, the older women trying to get dressed up as a baby doll is really what has worried us.
LIZ HAYES: Bioethics campaigner Josephine Quintavalle says what is happening is horrifying. Just because science has made it possible doesn't make it right.
JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE: I don't think that IVF should be offered to anybody who's past natural reproductive age, which is usually determined by the woman's menopause. And I think there's a sense of ridiculousness about a woman of that age imagining that she fulfils the model of motherhood.
ADRIANA ILIESCU (TRANSLATION): I think somebody who doesn't wholeheartedly congratulate you on your baby is a person who is suffering from an inferiority complex.
LIZ HAYES: So no-one has come up in the street and said, "Shame on you"?
ADRIANA ILIESCU: Nobody has approached me on the street saying, "Shame on you". On the contrary, while I'm travelling on the bus, for instance, there are people who invite me to take a seat.
JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE: Miss Iliescu very much wanted a child but she couldn't achieve this pregnancy with her own body. She simply didn't have any viable eggs left.
LIZ HAYES: And that's led to a sinister new trade. Romania is still a desperately poor country and, with few laws to protect them, its young women are being preyed upon for an international trade in human embryos. It's a flourishing business, driven by the growing number of older IVF patients, where teenagers are lured into selling their eggs.
ALINA NODOKU (TRANSLATION): They didn't tell me anything about the procedure. It was a place where you could not ask any questions.
LIZ HAYES: Nineteen-year-old Alina Nodoku needed money to get married and heard that she could make quick cash by selling her eggs. But for Alina, it all went wrong and she was rushed to hospital.
ALINA NODOKU: TRANSLATION: I was feeling very bad. I was dizzy, I was vomiting. They said it was normal for me to feel bad.
LIZ HAYES: Which company did you go to?
ALINA NODOKU: GlobalART.
LIZ HAYES: GlobalART?
ALINA NODOKU: Yes.
LIZ HAYES: GlobalART proved to be an unlicensed fertility clinic in the Romanian capital Bucharest with connections to clinics in the US, Britain and Israel. Our repeated attempts to talk to the company proved fruitless. When Alina had her eggs removed here, she was payed the grand sum of $250. But check the company's website and you'll find that the women who receive these eggs pay a minimum US$8000 for the treatment. Were your ovaries and your womb damaged?
ALINA NODOKU (TRANSLATION): Yes. The ovaries were very large and there was a lot of fluid inside.
LIZ HAYES: For Alina, who sets out every night to work in a mattress factory, the $250 she earned was the equivalent of three months pay. Now Alina fears that deal may have cost her her own chance to be a mother.
ALINA NODOKU (TRANSLATION): Well, to be very frank, I realise that I did something extremely stupid.
JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE: Egg donation is not an easy process. Your ovaries are going to be turned off and then turned on with stimulatory drugs that makes them overproduce eggs so that instead of producing one or maybe two eggs in a cycle, you may produce 20, 30. In a sense, it makes the ovaries explode.
LIZ HAYES: So it's risky business?
JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE: It's risky business. I certainly don't think you have a right to expose any women to even minimal risks in order to provide somebody of 67 with a child.
LIZ HAYES: Baby Eliza Maria was born premature and has spent the first nine weeks of her life in hospital. Now, Adriana Iliescu is looking forward to taking her daughter home. And if she lives to the age of 87, as her own parents did, she reckons they can count on spending at least the next 21 years together. Do you think 21 years is enough with your daughter?
ADRIANA ILIESCU (TRANSLATION): My time left with her will never be sufficient, no matter how much that is. But I expect my daughter at the age of 19 or 20 to have plans about her own family so she will always have a family.
LIZ HAYES: So what does this aging mum have to look forward to? Well, there are clues. In 1992, Rosanna della Corte caused outrage in her small Italian village when at age 60 she set out to become the world's oldest mother.
ROSANNA DELLA CORTE: I know I can do it because I want it so much.
LIZ HAYES: Back then, Rosanna was mourning the loss of her first child, 17-year-old Ricardo, in a motorcycle accident.
ROSANNA DELLA CORTE: I lived for him. He was the most beautiful thing I had and we loved Ricardo so much, we can't live without him.
LIZ HAYES: Fast forward 13 years and, thanks to IVF, Rosanna is the beaming mother of a new Ricardo.
ROSANNA DELLA CORTE (TRANSLATION): To the people that think that it is a crazy thing having a child at my age, they don't know what it means losing a son, and they don't know how happy I am about having had Ricardo.
LIZ HAYES: So how is this now 73-year-old handling motherhood second time around, especially since Ricardo number two seems every bit as much a handful as his late brother?
ROSANNA DELLA CORTE (TRANSLATION): I never feel tired. I feel like a 20-year-old woman. When I meet with other mothers and they complain that they feel tired, they have headache, they just drive me crazy because I don't feel old at all.
LIZ HAYES: But for women like Aleta St James, there's a double standard at work.
ALETA ST JAMES: If a man is in his 80s that seems to be fine. So why are women stopped to have their dreams and desires manifested? Because society says, you know, "this is ridiculous, you're too old". And all these men that were kind of making quips at me are my age. And they're having children, you know.
LIZ HAYES: So maybe the true test is not how old mothers are, but how well they cope. Wendy Kenyon is 60. Seven years ago she had triplets Rebecca, Darelle and Trent. She already had a 10-year-old son Dean. So how is she doing?
WENDY KENYON: People say to me, "You're old enough to be their grandmother". Yes, sure enough. But there are lots of grandmothers out there bringing up children. Sure I get tired, but so do any other mothers of triplets or anybody who has four children. Sure, you know, people my age are off on cruises and looking at retirement and all that. My life with Phil and the children we have a great time. You know, we do all the things that normal 30-year-olds do with their children.
LIZ HAYES: All this, of course, is still ahead for 66-year-old Adriana Iliescu as she gets ready to go home and into the history books. And you don't mind being in the Guinness Book of Records for being the oldest mother in the world?
ADRIANA ILIESCU (TRANSLATION): If you can put in a good word for me, I would be pleased to be in the Guinness Book of Records and I think my daughter also would be very happy.
LIZ HAYES: Are you confident that you can give your children what most other children would get from younger parents?
ALETA ST JAMES: Not only confident, I can put my money on it.
LIZ HAYES: We still have to grapple with how old is too old. But what is not in doubt is that every one of the women we spoke to love and cherish their babies. And as far as they're concerned, we'd better start getting used to it.
Story name: Never too old
STORY
LIZ HAYES: For millions of people around the world, there's something terribly wrong with this picture. She may look like a proud gran. In fact, Adriana Iliescu is the mother. She's just given birth to daughter Eliza Maria at the age of 66.
ADRIANA ILIESCU (TRANSLATION): I think it's a beautiful gift. My life has been made complete with something that was missing. The emptiness I felt in my life has been filled.
LIZ HAYES: This Romanian university professor is the world's oldest mother. She's just too old. We have to have the courage to say this she's too old and it's selfish.
LIZ HAYES: Miss Iliescu was briefly married in her early 20s but decided not to have children indeed, had two abortions. Now, still single, she's discovered it really is never too late. What do you intend telling your daughter about why you decided to have her at the age of 66?
ADRIANA ILIESCU (TRANSLATION): I will probably break this to her in stages as she is growing up. I'm not worried because by that time she'll also be able to understand my achievements for a lifetime.
LIZ HAYES: It has become a worldwide phenomenon. First-time mothers are getting older, much older. In fact, the number of women giving birth in their 40s has doubled in the last decade. And it's no longer shocking to find mothers in their 50s.
ALETA ST JAMES: I'm an emotional healer and a life coach and I thought, "What is my deepest desire?" And my deepest desire was to have children and to have a family. And so I thought, "You know what, I'm going to go and do that."
LIZ HAYES: Aleta St James simply decided she wasn't ready to have children until she was 56. There's no father or father figure in this household either. But this new age New Yorker had no trouble finding a doctor willing to help.
ALETA ST JAMES: He said, "Aleta, you look young, you have the body of a 30-year-old, you look fabulous, there's no reason why you can't do this, let's go for it."
LIZ HAYES: When people say you look fabulous, you do, but they're talking about something else, though.
ALETA ST JAMES: Physiologically. In other words, you could be ... like, I'm 57 right now but physiologically I'm not 57. My body is, like 35, 40 years old.
"And then we're going to see the dinosaurs at the museum. You'll love those. Those are great."
LIZ HAYES: Twins Francesca and Gian are now four months old and Aleta is coping well with help from her 24-hour-a-day nanny Edna. For Aleta, it's all perfectly natural, even though none of this would have been possible without a willing egg donor.
ALETA ST JAMES: I know that my particular donor was very, very happy. She said that this woman must really want to have children to go through all this and I know she's going to bring up my children very well. And it's a gift.
LIZ HAYES: It is IVF technology that has given women in their 50s and 60s the chance to have babies. But it also requires doctors who are willing to take on much older patients. And the proudest IVF specialist in the world today is the man who engineered Adriana Iliescu's pregnancy, Dr Bogdan Marinescu.
So there's no such thing as too old?
DR BOGDAN MARINESCU: It's very difficult to say 'too old'.
LIZ HAYES: You would do it again?
DR BOGDAN MARINESCU: Maybe yes, maybe not. We'll see.
JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE: What has happened with Miss Iliescu is we've seen her you know, the older women trying to get dressed up as a baby doll is really what has worried us.
LIZ HAYES: Bioethics campaigner Josephine Quintavalle says what is happening is horrifying. Just because science has made it possible doesn't make it right.
JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE: I don't think that IVF should be offered to anybody who's past natural reproductive age, which is usually determined by the woman's menopause. And I think there's a sense of ridiculousness about a woman of that age imagining that she fulfils the model of motherhood.
ADRIANA ILIESCU (TRANSLATION): I think somebody who doesn't wholeheartedly congratulate you on your baby is a person who is suffering from an inferiority complex.
LIZ HAYES: So no-one has come up in the street and said, "Shame on you"?
ADRIANA ILIESCU: Nobody has approached me on the street saying, "Shame on you". On the contrary, while I'm travelling on the bus, for instance, there are people who invite me to take a seat.
JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE: Miss Iliescu very much wanted a child but she couldn't achieve this pregnancy with her own body. She simply didn't have any viable eggs left.
LIZ HAYES: And that's led to a sinister new trade. Romania is still a desperately poor country and, with few laws to protect them, its young women are being preyed upon for an international trade in human embryos. It's a flourishing business, driven by the growing number of older IVF patients, where teenagers are lured into selling their eggs.
ALINA NODOKU (TRANSLATION): They didn't tell me anything about the procedure. It was a place where you could not ask any questions.
LIZ HAYES: Nineteen-year-old Alina Nodoku needed money to get married and heard that she could make quick cash by selling her eggs. But for Alina, it all went wrong and she was rushed to hospital.
ALINA NODOKU: TRANSLATION: I was feeling very bad. I was dizzy, I was vomiting. They said it was normal for me to feel bad.
LIZ HAYES: Which company did you go to?
ALINA NODOKU: GlobalART.
LIZ HAYES: GlobalART?
ALINA NODOKU: Yes.
LIZ HAYES: GlobalART proved to be an unlicensed fertility clinic in the Romanian capital Bucharest with connections to clinics in the US, Britain and Israel. Our repeated attempts to talk to the company proved fruitless. When Alina had her eggs removed here, she was payed the grand sum of $250. But check the company's website and you'll find that the women who receive these eggs pay a minimum US$8000 for the treatment. Were your ovaries and your womb damaged?
ALINA NODOKU (TRANSLATION): Yes. The ovaries were very large and there was a lot of fluid inside.
LIZ HAYES: For Alina, who sets out every night to work in a mattress factory, the $250 she earned was the equivalent of three months pay. Now Alina fears that deal may have cost her her own chance to be a mother.
ALINA NODOKU (TRANSLATION): Well, to be very frank, I realise that I did something extremely stupid.
JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE: Egg donation is not an easy process. Your ovaries are going to be turned off and then turned on with stimulatory drugs that makes them overproduce eggs so that instead of producing one or maybe two eggs in a cycle, you may produce 20, 30. In a sense, it makes the ovaries explode.
LIZ HAYES: So it's risky business?
JOSEPHINE QUINTAVALLE: It's risky business. I certainly don't think you have a right to expose any women to even minimal risks in order to provide somebody of 67 with a child.
LIZ HAYES: Baby Eliza Maria was born premature and has spent the first nine weeks of her life in hospital. Now, Adriana Iliescu is looking forward to taking her daughter home. And if she lives to the age of 87, as her own parents did, she reckons they can count on spending at least the next 21 years together. Do you think 21 years is enough with your daughter?
ADRIANA ILIESCU (TRANSLATION): My time left with her will never be sufficient, no matter how much that is. But I expect my daughter at the age of 19 or 20 to have plans about her own family so she will always have a family.
LIZ HAYES: So what does this aging mum have to look forward to? Well, there are clues. In 1992, Rosanna della Corte caused outrage in her small Italian village when at age 60 she set out to become the world's oldest mother.
ROSANNA DELLA CORTE: I know I can do it because I want it so much.
LIZ HAYES: Back then, Rosanna was mourning the loss of her first child, 17-year-old Ricardo, in a motorcycle accident.
ROSANNA DELLA CORTE: I lived for him. He was the most beautiful thing I had and we loved Ricardo so much, we can't live without him.
LIZ HAYES: Fast forward 13 years and, thanks to IVF, Rosanna is the beaming mother of a new Ricardo.
ROSANNA DELLA CORTE (TRANSLATION): To the people that think that it is a crazy thing having a child at my age, they don't know what it means losing a son, and they don't know how happy I am about having had Ricardo.
LIZ HAYES: So how is this now 73-year-old handling motherhood second time around, especially since Ricardo number two seems every bit as much a handful as his late brother?
ROSANNA DELLA CORTE (TRANSLATION): I never feel tired. I feel like a 20-year-old woman. When I meet with other mothers and they complain that they feel tired, they have headache, they just drive me crazy because I don't feel old at all.
LIZ HAYES: But for women like Aleta St James, there's a double standard at work.
ALETA ST JAMES: If a man is in his 80s that seems to be fine. So why are women stopped to have their dreams and desires manifested? Because society says, you know, "this is ridiculous, you're too old". And all these men that were kind of making quips at me are my age. And they're having children, you know.
LIZ HAYES: So maybe the true test is not how old mothers are, but how well they cope. Wendy Kenyon is 60. Seven years ago she had triplets Rebecca, Darelle and Trent. She already had a 10-year-old son Dean. So how is she doing?
WENDY KENYON: People say to me, "You're old enough to be their grandmother". Yes, sure enough. But there are lots of grandmothers out there bringing up children. Sure I get tired, but so do any other mothers of triplets or anybody who has four children. Sure, you know, people my age are off on cruises and looking at retirement and all that. My life with Phil and the children we have a great time. You know, we do all the things that normal 30-year-olds do with their children.
LIZ HAYES: All this, of course, is still ahead for 66-year-old Adriana Iliescu as she gets ready to go home and into the history books. And you don't mind being in the Guinness Book of Records for being the oldest mother in the world?
ADRIANA ILIESCU (TRANSLATION): If you can put in a good word for me, I would be pleased to be in the Guinness Book of Records and I think my daughter also would be very happy.
LIZ HAYES: Are you confident that you can give your children what most other children would get from younger parents?
ALETA ST JAMES: Not only confident, I can put my money on it.
LIZ HAYES: We still have to grapple with how old is too old. But what is not in doubt is that every one of the women we spoke to love and cherish their babies. And as far as they're concerned, we'd better start getting used to it.