A 50-year-old Queensland woman has made history as the oldest Australian woman to fall pregnant naturally and give birth to a healthy first child.
A semi-retired Gold Coast real estate agent, Anthea Nicholas, had a ''one-in-several-million'' chance of conceiving without in vitro fertilisation, and her chances of miscarriage were up to 70 per cent. Ms Nicholas has told the Australian Women's Weekly that she had put her symptoms of nausea down to the early effects of menopause. It was her husband, Peter Byrne, who suggested she might be pregnant. When it was confirmed, Ms Nicholas's reaction was fear - about the pregnancy and that people would accuse her of being too old to be a new mother.
''I knew the odds for us would be horrendous,'' she said. ''I had massive fear, there's no other word for it.'' But the fears vanished when Nicholas Jay was born perfectly healthy five weeks ago.
The gynaecologist, Andrew Cary, said the birth was ''a miracle'', as Ms Nicholas also had a condition that would make pregnancy and delivery difficult in a woman of any age.