When most women her age are gearing up for retirement or preparing for grandchilden, one 61-year-old woman from Brazil is set to become a first-time mother in a matter of months.

The post-menopausal woman, who doesn’t want to be named, is married to a 38-year-old man and became pregnant with a donor egg fertilized by her husband’s sperm, the Agence France-Presse reports.

She is due in November.

“I had already gone through menopause. . . My husband wanted to be a father. I wanted to be a mother, too,” the unnamed woman told O Globo newspaper Sunday. “I am in great health. . . and I have undergone a very thorough medical clearance.”

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The intense debate surrounding a very touchy subject.

In a fascinating article that recently appeared in New York Magazine, writer Lisa Miller outlines and ultimately defends the current boom of men and women becoming parents at age 50 and beyond.

The article begins with an anecdote - a couple meet and fall in love when she's 47 and he's 54. Through a donor egg and her husband's sperm, the woman gives birth to her first daughter at age 50.

Two years later, she attempts to get pregnant again. This time, she has to be brought out of menopause with hormones before she is able to become pregnant. Shortly thereafter, she gives birth to her second daughter.

This anecdote is only one of many, and they're on the rise. Birth rates among women ages 45 to 49 have risen 17% in just the past three years alone. Reproductive technology, of course, accounts for this sharp increase.

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A teacher of 56 has given birth to twins after defying medical advice not to become pregnant.

Lynne Bezant and her husband Derek had spent £5,500 on IVF treatment, even though they already had three grown-up children.

They said they were lonely after their family grew up and left home. Babies David and Susan were born on Thursday, almost a month early, weighing 3lbs 4oz and 4lbs 15oz respectively.

Their arrival at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire, made Mrs Bezant the oldest British woman to give birth to twins.

She said: 'I'm just so happy, it's unbelievable.' Mrs Bezant became pregnant after treatment at the London Gynaecological and Fertility Clinic, the only one in Britain offering the service to women older than 51. They used eggs from a younger donor.

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A 44-year-old mother says she was shocked when she gave birth to her third child on a Derbyshire street.

Jane Eadie, from Langley Mill, said she had no idea she was pregnant and thought she was suffering from food poisoning.

She said she believed that she had gained weight over the last nine months because she had stopped taking some pills and thought she had started the menopause.

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IN an ideal world I would have had children younger but that's just not the way it worked out. I definitely wasn't ready to be a mother in my twenties.

I met my husband, Andy, when I was 35 and we had our first baby when I was 37 so we really didn't waste much time once we knew it was the way our relationship was heading.

We weren't married when we had our first daughter because we realized having a baby was something we needed to do sooner rather than later. I was very lucky that I had no trouble falling pregnant at that age.

We weren't in a position to have another baby straight away and by the time I fell pregnant with my second daughter I was 43 and I was six weeks shy of my 44th birthday when she was born.

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Here’s a little quiz for you. What did the following famous women do at the ages given: Arlene Philips, 47; Jane Seymour, 44; Christie Brinkley, 44; Bridget Jones author Helen Fielding, 48?

Some form of cosmetic surgery, perhaps? Divorce, maybe?

No, that’s the age at which they gave birth. And this week Carla Bruni joined the number of high‑profile older mums when she had her daughter at the age of 43 — not, perhaps, as unusual as Cherie Blair giving birth to baby Leo at 45, but still old enough to raise a few eyebrows.

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"We are so excited," the Duggar mother, 45, who is three-and-a-half months along, told the mag. "I feel good. I am past the sickness stage now."

"It is a miracle. Josie is the most energetic, busy little almost-2-year-old," Michelle told the mag. "She is short, and yet she can keep up with the big girls and she thinks she is just as big as they are. We are amazed at what she can do."

According to dad Jim Bob, his wife is doing better than ever.

"Michelle is probably in better health now than she was 10 years ago," the 46-year-old said. "She has been getting on an elliptical for about an hour a day and is very careful of what she eats."

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It may seem a concept that defies nature, but with the help of fertility specialists, rising numbers of women are giving birth to their firstborns at an age when many of their peers are anticipating, or enjoying, grandparenthood.

Ann Maloney, who gave birth to her first baby at 50, is just one example.

She told New York Magazine how she and her second husband, John Ross, who she met when she was 47, conceived using a donor egg within a year of meeting.

Fiona Palin, from Los Angeles, California, who, like Kelly Preston, was 48 when she gave birth to new baby daughter Katherine, is not much younger and also struggled to conceive.

Since she and husband Nick, 63, started trying for a baby ten years ago, she went through six failed IVF cycles and three tragic miscarriages.

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"My 27-year-old dead son is back. That's how I feel," said Kanakalata Ram, who became the oldest mother in the state at the ripe age of 61 after losing her only son in a road accident a year ago.

"After pondering over options to have a child again, I suggested to her that we should adopt. But she wanted to explore if she can be a mother with medical help," said Singh. The couple had started taking treatment for assisted reproduction days after their son's death. "My son has given me so much energy. I have found new reason to live now," said Kanakalata who delivered her baby boy on December 2 through a Caesarian section. She had been avoiding the media glare so far.

"People often ask me how will I take care of my son at this old age. One thing I have realized that death can come to any one at any age. So why worry about age," said Kanakalata, who has named her newborn Rudra Aditya Siddharth Singh.

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