A 46-year-old Florida woman just set a record after giving birth to healthy baby boy last year via IVF. It might not sound that remarkable, but what truly sets Belinda Slaughter's delivery apart? She used her own egg, not a donated or even frozen embryo.
As most people already know, conceiving and delivering a baby at that age is extremely difficult for most women, which is why many take the precaution of freezing their eggs to preserve for future IVF. But even so, it's never a guarantee. That's why doctors are so stunned at Slaughter's story. She is now officially the oldest woman in the US (and possibly the world!) to give birth to a healthy baby through in-vitro using her own 46-year-old eggs. Wow!
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Slaughter, now 47, welcomed her son, Jackson, in September, despite that she was initially told she only had about one percent of conceiving. Luckily for her, that wasn't the case and while the pregnancy was not without its complications (she ended up delivering at 31.5 weeks), she ended up giving birth to a healthy baby boy.
Still, while doctors are taken aback by the case, Slaughter herself didn't seem to realize the rarity of her pregnancy. "I didn't think this was so special," Slaughter told the Sentinel. "I thought, 'There are women older than I am having babies.' " That's probably true, but as other reports point out, she is the oldest on record.
While doctors say women should look as Slaughter's case as an anomaly and not wait until that age to get pregnant if they can help it to avoid complications, her story is pretty amazing. At the age of 46, conceiving is hard enough but to do so, with her own egg and despite her fertility issues? Clearly, she was meant to have that baby!
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