Oldest Parents of Twins

Oldest Moms to Deliver Twins

Omkari Panwar , Uttar Pradesh, India, 72 years old, ?? months, ?? days
Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara , Barcelona, Spain, 66 years old, 11 months, 24 days
Adriana Iliescu, Romania, 66 years old, 7 months
Dr. Frieda Birnbaum, Saddle River, New Jersey, 60 years old
Unnamed Woman, England, 59 years old
Unnamed Woman, England/India, 59 years old (2008)
Lauren Cohen, Paramus, NJ, 59 years, 10 months, 11 days

The world's oldest mom of twins or any child officially became Omkari Panwar, age 72, on June 27, 2008. Panwar and her 75-year-old husband, Charam Singh, live in a rural village in Uttar Pradesh, India and had two grown daughters and five grandchildren at the time they made the decision to spend their life savings and undergo in-vitro to try to produce a son. Mrs. Panwar had a difficult pregnancy but did deliver boy/girl twins to become the oldest mom of twins. (Twinstuff's discussion/coverage of this birth)

Before Mrs. Panwar set the record in 2008, Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara (b. January 5, 1940) gave birth to twin sons at Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona, Spain on December 29, 2006, at the age of 66 — one week before her 67th birthday. The babies were delivered prematurely by caesarean section and weighed 3.5 lb (1.6 kg) each. Bousada became pregnant after receiving IVF treatment using donor eggs from from a fertility clinic in Los Angeles, California, which claims that Bousada informed them that she was 55. Her family were unaware that she had gone to the United States to undergo fertility treatment prior to the births. Manual Bousada de Lara, Bousada's older brother, criticized her decision, expressing concern over whether she would be able to raise children at her age. In response such concerns, Bousada stated, "My mum lived to be 101 and there's no reason I couldn't do the same". She is currently the oldest known birth mother in the world.

The record for the oldest woman to ever have a baby before de Lara had been Adriana Iliescu of Romania, who delivered a baby girl named Eliza Marie at age 66 years, 7+ months on January 16, 2005. Eliza Marie weighed 3 pounds, 3 ounces at birth and was born at around 33 to 34 weeks of her mom's pregnancy. Ms. Iliescu was originally pregnant with triplets, miscarried one baby, and delievered the twin sister of Eliza Marie stillborn.

On May 22, 2007, Dr. Frieda Birnbaum of Saddle River, NJ delivered healthy twin boys at the Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey. At age 60, she now becomes the oldest woman in the United States to deliver twins although Mrs. Birnbaum's birthdate in unknown at this point. At the time of her delivery, she is the mom of three children, age 33, 29 and 6. She underwent IVF in South Africa. Dr. Birnbaum has written an advice column in Bergen County, New Jersey and is the author of the paperback, What Price Power: An In-Depth Study of the Professional Woman in a Relationship. Her husband, Ken Birnbaum, was 63 at the time of the birth and the couple had been married for 38 years at the time of the twins delivery. (Twinstuff discussions/coverage of the births)

It is believed that the oldest American women before Mrs. Birnbaum to successfully give birth to twins are Lauren Cohen of Paramus, New Jersey, and an unnamed 59-year-old woman from England (exact age unknown). There was another story about a 59-year-old woman from India who delivered twin girls in England in 2008. Her husband was 72 years old at the time of delivery. (source)

Mrs. Cohen is married to Frank Garcia with whom she also gave birth to a girl, Racquel, in December, 2004. Her twins, Giselle and Gregory, were born in New York City on May 22, 2006, a year to the date before the Birnbaum twins. The twins were conceived in vitro with the help of an egg donor. Mrs. Cohen turned 60 on August 11, 2006. (more on the birth)

The millionnaire businesswoman in England had been through menopause and was technically infertile when she was pregnated with the fertilized eggs of a 25-year-old woman in 1993 (the eggs were fertilized by her husband). She gave birth to twins on Christmas Day, 1993. The British High Court ruled in early 1994 that neither the woman's name nor her twins' names be revealed by the media and the family has maintained its anonymity (source: Press Association story, Jan. 12, 1994)

Some other older moms of twins include Lin Fu-mei of Taiwan who gave birth to twins at age 58, Janet Bosher of England, who also gave birth at age 58 after seeing a London fertility clinic managed by Professor Ian Craft , Samira Ellis, a 58-year-old Israeli native who delivered boy/girl twins, Elias and Solva, in Sweden on March 8, 2003, Ann Stolper, a 58-year-old Delray Beach, Fla. surrogate carrier of her daughter's boy/girl twins, Itai and Maya, which were delivered on Dec. 1, 2006, a 57-year-old United States mother of twins, Judy Cates of Evansville, Indiana, who delivered twin girls, Margaret and Calli Sue on December 12, 1998 (Cates is 10 years older than her husband), a 56-year-old single mom, Aleta St. James, who delivered boy/girl twins three days shy of her 57th birthday on Nov. 9, 2004 in New York City, Lynne Bezant of England, who gave birth to boy/girl twins at age 56 on May 24, 2001 (she was also treated by Dr. Anitori) and 55-year-old, Marilyn Nolen, the former women's volleyball coach at Saint Louis University, who was profiled in USA Today in the summer of 2000. Nolen, who took part in a high-tech fertility program at the USC School of Medicine, had twin boys Travis and Ryan on March 22, 2000.

On July 2, 2007, a 55-year-old Decautur, Georgia resident originally from Ghana, Veronica Mensah, delivered boy/girl twins, Daniel Atsu Dikenou and Diane Atsupui Dikenou. The twins were her first children and were through an assisted (IVF) pregnancy. On August 27, 2007, a 55-year-old woman in India delivered twins to evidently become the oldest mom to ever have twins in that country.

Oldest Dad of Twins

Tom Lambert, Robeline, Louisiana, 78 years old

The oldest father of twins we have verifiable proof is Tom Lambert of Robeline, Louisiana, who was 78 years, 1 month old when he and his wife, Addie (Williams), 41, became the parents of twin boys, Dale and Dean, born in Natchitoches, Louisiana on March 15, 1948.

Tom Lambert (1870-1964) was the father of 15 children (12 boys, 3 girls) with three wives. He and Addie had 7 children together and Tom was 60 when he married Addie, 23, in 1930. The Lambert twins continue to live in Louisiana. As of the end of 2004, 7 of the 15 children were still living. Dale and Dean have one older brother, Phillip, who is 84 (28 years older then the twins) and an 81-year-old living niece. Their oldest brother, Joe, was born in 1895, 53 years before the twins were born.

The second-oldest dad of twins we've heard about is Everett Franklin of Wichita, Kansas, who on August 20, 1962 at age 75 (along with his 37-year-old wife) became the parents of twins, Don and Naomi. (source: AP and Twins: Twice the Trouble, Twice the Fun). Franklin had first become a father 47 years earlier with a previous wife.