A retired Chinese woman, who gave birth to twin girls at the age of 60, has landed at the top of the list of the country's oldest mothers.
The two babies were born prematurely on May 25, 34 weeks after Cheng Lin (not her real name) successfully received in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), the China Daily reported.
Cheng and her husband had decided to try for a baby again after Tingting, their daughter died at 28, along with her husband, in a gas poisoning incident last year.
According to the Xin'an Evening News, Cheng married in 1977 and had her only daughter, Tingting, in 1980. She grew up healthy and married in September 2008.
Half a year into the marriage, Tingting and her husband died as a result of gas poisoning during the spring festival in 2009.
Cheng and her husband were heartbroken over the deaths, and in a bid to find comfort she decided to try for a baby through IVF, though she realised that having another baby at her age was probably out of the question.
Her husband Wu was initially not in favour of the idea, but at Cheng's insistence he reluctantly agreed.
With the help of friends, Cheng and her husband travelled to Beijing last May, meeting a host of gynaecologists.
Most of them thought her chances of becoming pregnant would be very slim and that such a pregnancy would be unprecedented in the country.
But Cheng did not give up and began to take daily medication and injections after returning to her hometown Hefei.
On October 13, 2009, Cheng had a successful test-tube baby operation and became pregnant with twins.
Since Cheng could not go the full term with her pregnancy like younger mothers, the doctors at Hefei 105 Hospital, where she awaited the delivery, decided to conduct a caesarean section.
"I do not have any thought, other than wishing for the safe birth of my two children," she said before being sent to the surgery room.
The two infant girls are now in incubators in the hospital's intensive care unit. "The infants' conditions are stable," a nurse said. "The medical checks are ongoing and we need to further observe their conditions due to the complexity of the prematurity."
"Their cry resembles [that of] my late daughter, which is very silvery," Cheng said while frowning from the pain from the scar on her stomach.
"The girls give me and my husband the courage to live on. Despite the fact that we are old, we have the confidence to bring them up," she said.
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