Posted on 02/18/2006 12:20:36 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
REDDING – A 62-year-old woman gave birth Friday to a healthy 6-pound, 9-ounce baby boy, becoming one of the oldest women in the world to successfully bear a child. The newborn is the 12th child of Janise Wulf, who's also a grandmother of 20 and great-grandmother of three.
Wulf and her third husband, Scott, 48, named the red-haired boy, Adam Charles Wulf. He follows just 3½ years behind his older brother, Ian.
“I hate to raise one alone, without a sibling,” said Wulf, who was impregnated both times through in vitro fertilization.
Wulf has given birth to a total of 12 children, although one son died in his 30s and another died at birth with undeveloped lungs. Of her 10 living children, the oldest is 40.
“I think she's amazing. She's got more than enough love to give,” Myers said.
Wulf is used to defying the odds. Blind since birth, she was a synchronized swimmer in high school, worked as a piano and organ saleswoman and developed a passion for cooking.
Wulf said Friday that she considers her late-in-life pregnancy a groundbreaking act for older women.
“Age is a number. You're as old as you feel,” she said. “Every time you revolutionize something or you do something different, there's going to be naysayers.”
(Excerpt) Read more at signonsandiego.com ...
I think the Catholic Church is right about in vitro. I believe strongly that to go the in vitro route requires a low view of life. How anyone can conceive several babies knowing in advance that the majority of them won't make it is beyond me. I understand the desire to have a child, but there are many children who need a loving home if the desire is that strong, and if the desire to raise a child is purely unselfish, which many claim it is. IMO in vitro is an act of selfishness, not an act of love, and reveals how many parents want to have children for their own selfish reasons.
My hat is off to the many parents who have children naturally, and who adopt, and truly do give of themselves sacrificially to raise them properly.
My daughter has a neighbor with 3 children. There is a set of 4 year old twins and a 3 year old. All 3 were conceived through in vitro. The weirdest aspect of it is that the 3 year old is a triplet of the twins. Her embryo wasn't implanted with theirs. Now their dilemma is that they have a few more frozen embryos and don't know what to do with them.
Let's see: 62 + 18 = 80. When this baby reaches 18, his mama will be 80. Somehow I just don't relish the idea of dealing with a teenager when I'm 80.
And that is the other reason I vehemently oppose in vitro. To me it's no different than abortion. In fact, in some ways it's worse. My blood ran cold when a friend of mine, who has had 2 babies by in vitro, told me she'd rather destroy (i.e. kill) their left-over embryos (i.e. unwanted babies) than to give them to someone else to raise.
Dear jocon307,
"But I'm not sure ALL fertility medical help would be off the table. I'm not sure about that at all."
Without getting into the graphic details, the Catholic Church permits some fertility treatments.
IVF is clearly not one of them.
sitetest
lol
I'm curious, because I contemplated in vitro quite a while back (before my fertility kicked in a little too well). I had planned on telling the doctor to only make embryos that we would actually implant me with (3 max, I guess) and implant all, no selective reductions, etc... Is that not an option? I figure if we were going to pay for it, we could set the ground rules.
I went to High School with a group of kids that had 18 kids in their family. All had the same Mom & Dad.
A guy I was in the Army with came from a family of 16 kids.
Those are the highest number of kids I know, but I'm sure that record's been beat. :)
Maybe someone should tell her where they come from. ;-)
Interesting discussion on the thread about in vitro, example of a couple who don't know what to do with all the "extra" frozen embryos.
:-(
One of my best hunting/fishing buddies is my dad, who is only 18 years older than me. I am truly glad he is not 62 years older than me.
god bless this woman!
My grandfather was 20 when my father was born, and Dad says he never minded being an only child, because his father and his father's friends were like his brothers.
I feel like an "old" mother at 39 ... I can't imagine doing this at 62!
She must be crazy I want to blow my head off having a two year old and I'm 41. I will never rest again! :0)
You can set the ground rules, as far as how many embryos (babies) you want "made" (conceived). (Don't you see how the terminology they use really waters this down, making it more "tasteful"?)
However, from what I understand, it costs just as much to "make" a dozen as it does three. There's a very big chance that three will naturally abort on first try, so there's the dilemma: do you pay thousands of dollars for a very large gamble, or do you pay the same ammount for more embryos (babies) with a bigger chance that you'll get at least one baby out of the bunch? And why even conceive three knowing that most likely one or all three won't make it?
To me it's a very low view of life to think that it's worth two babies dying in order to get one. In reality, in most cases it ends up being more than that. For my friend, seven babies died in order for her to have her first. I didn't have the heart to ask her how many they implanted for the second one, nor how many times they tried, before one "took" and made it to birth. It really sickens me.
That's what older siblings are for. My mother in law is the youngest of a fairly large family. She was an aunt several times over when she was born. Her older sister more or less raised her, although her mother was still alive when I first started dating my wife. About 90 at a time when MIL would have been about 39 or 40. (Now that's a scary thought, my wife is now 16 years older than her mother was when I first met her.)
Help me remove this thread before my wife sees it...
My wife would say, "Tie this idiot's tubes, clip her husband and lock both of them up in the nearest mental hospital."
I posted this article because I wished to laud and defend big families and older-motherhood. OK so far. But I brushed past the issue of in-vitro fertilization much too fast --- almost parenthetically.
The fact is that IVF virtually always involves the death of 2 or 3 embryos, and often many more. This in itself is a very grave evil.
Moreover, even if IVF didn't involve generating human life and then destroying it, the process itself turns human procreation into a commercial transaction and a laboratory technique, which is inherently dehumanizing ---and it's part of the larger project of the deadly "commodifying" of human values which we see all around us.
I am convinced that IVF is morally objectionable in all cases. So although I can respect this mother-of-12's good intentions and wish her and her husband well with their precious little ones, I regret giving the impression that laboratory procreation is something to celebrate.
Please think this through carefully. I didn't at first.
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