Elderly Italian mums have twins

The parents had failed to conceive for 27 years. Photo / Thinkstock

A 58-year-old Italian woman became Italy's second post-menopausal new mother in a week after giving birth to twins in Milan, days after an Italian court criticised older couples who have babies.

"We are very happy, it's a miracle for which we thank the Lord," the mother told Italy's ANSA news agency, adding that she delivered on Thursday. The father is 65.

The new parents of fraternal twins (a boy and a girl) had failed to conceive for 27 years and only succeeded after a woman outside Italy donated an ovule. The practice is banned in Italy.

On Sunday, a 57-year-old woman and her 70-year-old husband had female twins in Salerno in southern Italy.

A Turin court earlier this month ruled that the parents of a toddler who are aged 70 and 57 were too old to raise her and recommended she be put up for adoption.

The 18-month-old girl, known as Viola, was conceived with the help of artificial insemination after the couple's repeated applications to adopt a child were turned down on the basis that they were too old.

The four-judge panel ruled that "they [the parents] never thought about the fact that their daughter would be orphaned at a very young age, and before that would be forced to care for her elderly parents," a report in La Repubblica newspaper said.

The child is "the fruit of a distorted application of the enormous possibilities offered by genetic progress", the judges added.

They ruled that librarian Gabriella De Ambrosis, 57, and her retired husband Luigi, 70, were driven by "a narcissistic need to have a child" and showed "indifference with regard to the child's perspective".

- AAP