This 46-Year-Old Woman's Baby Set a Record

A 46-year-old Florida woman became a new mom to a healthy baby boy last year via IVF—and though it's not unheard of for a woman to deliver a baby at her age, what's medically remarkable is that Belinda Slaughter didn't use frozen or donated embryos, but her own 46-year-old egg. And she's the oldest American woman verified to do so, NBC News reports. Son Jackson was born in September, the Orlando Sentinel reports, but the case was just published in a medical journal this month. Slaughter—who had fertility issues—was told she had a 1% chance of conceiving, but one of the four fresh, fertilized eggs implanted in her uterus latched on. "I didn't think this was so special," Slaughter, now 47, tells the Sentinel. "I thought, 'There are women older than I am having babies.'"

She’s right. NBC lists one past success a few years ago—an unverified 46-year-old Italian woman. The Sentinel lists a couple more: a 59-year-old Brit who conceived her child naturally without IVF, and another unverified case in 2011 of a 49-year-old woman who gave birth after using her year-old frozen eggs. But doctors emphasize just how rare a feat this was. Fertility expert Dr. Richard Paulson remarks that “in the world of reproduction, nothing gets better with age." Indeed, Slaughter’s pregnancy was rife with complications, and she delivered at 31.5 weeks. "In no way does a woman want to use this example to defer fertility until they are older,” her doctor says. (More fertility stories.)