Stock image of twin newborns. Sviatlana Lazarenka/Getty Images
- Safina Namukwaya, 70, gave birth to boy and girl twins at a hospital in the Ugandan capital Kampala.
- The mother, who gave birth to the siblings’ three-year-old sister in 2020, said it was a “miracle.”
- Doctors said they had “achieved the extraordinary” and claimed she was the oldest mother in Africa.
A 70-year-old woman who gave birth to twins on Wednesday is one of the oldest mothers in the world, a hospital in Uganda said. In 2019, 73-year-old Yerramatti Mangayamma from India also gave birth to twins.
According to the Women’s Hospital International and Fertility Centre, Safina Namukwaya gave birth to her siblings safely via cesarean section.
A reporter from Kampala news channel NTV said the couple, who weighed 3 pounds and 12 ounces each, were born in the 34th week of pregnancy.
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He interviewed Namukwaya shortly before her operation. She described her twin pregnancy as a “miracle.”
Namukwaya said her partner was unhappy about her giving birth to twins
She said she gave birth to her first child at age 67 in 2020 after facing stigmatization in her community for being childless.
“One day a little boy said I was cursed by my mother to die without a child,” Namukwaya said.
The senior citizen further said that she had suffered a miscarriage in the past and lost her husband in 1992. Four years later she met another partner.
However, the twins’ father was not at their side, she said.
“Men don’t like it when you tell them you’re carrying more than one child,” she said. “Since I was admitted here, my husband has never shown up,” she added, referring to the hospital complex.
Namukwaya told the interviewer that she had been “very sick” due to her double pregnancy and had spent almost all of her “savings” on healthcare.
However, she said she had “no words” for her specialist, Edward Sali, other than “kindness.”
The mother said she wondered who would take care of her when she was old
It is unknown whether she used her own eggs – possibly frozen when she was younger – or those from a donor to become pregnant via IVF.
She told NTV that the twins were “in the hands of God” and that “every child brings with it a blessing.”
Namukwaya hinted that she decided to get pregnant because she needed help as she got older.
“I looked after other people’s children and watched them grow up and leave me alone,” she said, adding: “I wondered who would take care of me when I got old.”
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