A NEW mother in India is claiming to be the oldest woman to give birth, at the age of 65.

Satyabhama Mahapatra, who has been married for 50 years but had no children, had a healthy son by Caesarean section after undergoing in-vitro fertilisation.

Doctors at the fertility clinic in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh, where the baby was born on Tuesday, were initially reluctant to conduct the £675 treatment because of her age. But Mrs Mahapatra and her husband, Krishnachandra, 68, a retired headmaster, pleaded with medical staff and persuaded them to go ahead.

Medical experts are to examine Mrs Mahapatra to try to prove that she is as old as she says. Like many rural Indians, she has no birth certificate, but maintains that she was born in early 1938.

If it proves to be the case, she will be, by several years, the world’s oldest woman to give birth. Until now the record has been held by Rosanna Dalla Corta, of Italy, who gave birth at 63 in 1994. An anonymous Californian woman of the same age also gave birth in 1997. The oldest mother in Britain is Liz Buttle, a 60-year-old Welsh hill farmer who lied about her age so that she could receive fertility treatment.

Yesterday Mrs Mahapatra was said to be relaxing and delighted at the Ashoka Super Speciality Hospital in Raipur, where she gave birth. The couple named their 6lb 6oz (3kg) boy Ashok, after the hospital.

Mrs Mahapatra said: “I’m elated. At long last happiness has come into my life.”

They implored Suresh Kumar Agarwal, the clinic’s gynaecologist and fertility specialist, to carry out the treatment, although at first he declined, fearing that the process would fail because of her age. “Even after all this time they still desperately wanted a child because in India it’s somehow shameful to have no offspring,” Dr Agarwal said. “These people, as old as my parents, were pleading and touching my feet as a mark of respect.”

Eventually the couple from Nayagarh, near the state capital of Bhubaneshwar, won the doctor over when they found their own donor. Veenarani Mahapatra, a 26-year-old niece, provided the eggs.

Dr Agarwal fertilised them with sperm from Veenarani Mahapatra’s husband. Two embryos were implanted in Mrs Mahapatra on August 1 last year after she had undergone nearly six months of hormonal treatment. One of the fertilised embryos failed to develop, but the other succeeded. Mrs Mahapatra developed high blood pressure towards the end of her sixth-month pregnancy, but was treated successfully and monitored in hospital.

On Tuesday at 8.32am, Dr Agarwal led the medical team that carried out the Caesarean operation. The doctor said that Mrs Mahapatra was a sprightly woman and he had few qualms about her ability to care for her baby. She has also been able to breastfeed.

Should the couple die soon, their niece and her husband, who were at the hospital throughout the birth, have agreed that they would become foster parents.

Before Mrs Mahapatra left her village, she ensured that her relatives and neighbours were aware of her pregnancy so that no one could later accuse her of snatching a baby.

The couple had tried for a child for many years and, when younger, consulted medical experts across India. However, only recently did they come to know that it might be possible to conceive using in-vitro fertilisation techniques after Dr Agarwal’s clinic, which opened in 2000, rose to prominence.

Their motivation was partly driven by Hindu teachings that dying childless could lead to eternal damnation.

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