Barbara Higgins, a New Hampshire woman who lost her 13-year-old daughter to a tumor cerebral In 2016, she gave birth to a baby boy at age 57, becoming one of the oldest women to have had a child in the United States.
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Higgins also had a brain tumor while trying to get pregnant and it was removed.
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The woman and her husband, Kenny Banzhoff, from Concord, have mourned their late daughter Molly. But in recent years, the couple, who also have an older daughter, thought about having another child.
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“It started shortly after my daughter Molly died, so my immediate reaction was that I was losing my mind, I’m sad, traumatized and everything, “Higgins said in an interview with Today. “But the dream was pretty consistent, and it was just about the process of having a baby, that it was supposed to do this, and sometimes the voice in my dream would call me ‘Mommy’, other times the voice in my dream would call me Barbara.
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“It wasn’t a super specific dream, but I was waking up with this compelling feeling that I need to call the doctor today, I need to work on this, I need to start this process,” he said.
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Then the dream began to materialize: they found a in vitro fertilization clinic in Boston who worked with them. Months later, Higgins gave birth to a healthy boy named Jack on Saturday. He weighed 5 pounds and 13 ounces.
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“Yes, I am scared and anxious, but I am so excited,” Higgins told the Concord Monitor on Friday.
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As he said in statements to TodayShe could only laugh to remember the reactions that people close to her had every time she announced that she was pregnant at 57 years old.
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“Expressionless. Looking at me,” said the mother. “I had to make this kind of announcement: ‘Hey, I have something to tell you, I’m 20 weeks pregnant with a baby,’ and there was just silence.”
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“I’m very proud of her,” her husband, Kenny Banzhoff, said on Today.
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Higgins, an avid runner who has been a track and field coach In high school, she said she did weight training until the day she went into labor.
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In addition to Higgins’ struggles with his brain tumor, Banzhoff, 65, had been living with kidney disease and underwent a transplant.
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According to Guinness World Records, the oldest woman to give birth is María del Carmen Bousada Lara, 66, who had twins in Spain in 2006.
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