A 66-year-old Romanian woman has given birth to a baby girl after years of fertility treatment and was claimed by Romanian media to be the world’s oldest mother ever. Adriana Iliescu, a university professor and author of children’s books, had been pregnant with twin girls. One died in the womb and doctors decided to perform a caesarean section in the 33rd week of pregnancy to save the other.

“We wanted to wait until the 34th week of pregnancy, when the children’s lungs would have reached full maturity, but we noticed on Saturday that the heart of one of the little girls had stopped beating,” Doctor Bogdan Marinescu, chief of the Giulesti maternity hospital in Bucharest, told a news conference on Sunday. “We decided to proceed with the operation to save the second girl,” Marinescu added.

Marinescu said both the mother and the child, who weighs 1.4 kg (3.1 lb) and whose name is Eliza-Maria, were in stable condition but the little girl would have to spend up to six weeks in hospital to reach two kg in weight. Iliescu, who will be 67 in May, became pregnant via in vitro fertilisation and doctors said this was her third attempt at carrying a pregnancy to term. He said the eggs and sperm used had come from “healthy young people”. “From a biological point of view, Ms Iliescu proved that she can carry a pregnancy to the end,” Marinescu said. “We managed to solve a case which made us all very nervous.” Two years ago, a 65 year-old retired schoolteacher in India gave birth to a baby boy.