A WOMAN who had IVF treatment abroad is to become Britain’s oldest mother, at the age of 63.

Patricia Rashbrook, a child psychiatrist who already has two children, is seven months pregnant after receiving treatment from the Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori.

She flew to Rome last October in efforts to conceive and, with her husband, John Farrant, 61, paid an estimated £50,000. Dr Rashbrook, who uses her maiden name at work, has told her children, Caroline, 26, and William, 22, who are said to be delighted.

Speaking from their home in Lewes, East Sussex, Mr Farrant told The Sun: “We are of course both very happy and looking forward to the birth. Obviously at our age it is quite a daunting prospect. She is Dr Rashbrook in her professional life but Mrs Farrant in her private life. And we are having this baby as Mr and Mrs Farrant.”

He added: “I would not call it a miracle baby but an assisted conception. We were aware that this was going to come out and we have been preparing ourselves psychologically for the news to break.”

Dr Rashbrook, who has been married before, is a consultant child psychiatrist with the East Sussex Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

Professor Antinori, a Rome gynaecologist, has become a controversial figure for his work with post-menopausal women and attempts at human cloning. The issues have divided opinion in Italy, with a poll last year rejecting a proposed relaxation in the fertility laws.

In Britain most doctors do not treat women over the age of 45. Treatment usually involves a healthy egg taken from a young woman that is placed in a glass dish with about 80,000 sperm for 18 hours.

After fertilisation, the egg is implanted in the woman via a catheter and the pregnancy continues as it would in a younger woman.

Last night an unnamed friend of the couple told the newspaper: “Patricia is overjoyed. She has devoted her life to children and will be an excellent mother despite her age. She is very, very excited and more than a little daunted by it all. She wanted to seal her love for John with a baby. Now her wish is coming true. She’s even considering going back to work after the birth. She may be 63, but she has the energy of a woman 20 years younger.”

The country’s oldest mother at present is Liz Buttle, a farmer, who gave birth to her son Joe in 1997, aged 60. The world’s oldest mother is believed to be Adriana Iliescu, of Romania, who had a daughter at the age of 66 last year.

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