IVF experts slam 66-yr-old's choice to have a baby

British woman Elizabeth Adeney is expected to give birth for the first time next month, aged 66. Photo / Getty Images

Elizabeth Adeney - referred to as Elizabeth Munro in some media reports - is expected to become the oldest woman in Britain to give birth when she has her first baby next month, but the 66-year-old says she is amazed at the attention her pregnancy is receiving.

"It doesn't interest me that I'm going to be the oldest mum in the country," she told Britain's Daily Telegraph.

"I'm amazed that the fact I am having a baby at all is interesting to anyone."

Adeney says age is not as important as how a person feels inside and claims she is fitter than half the young girls she has working for her in the manufacturing business she owns.

But fertility treatment experts have expressed concern over Adeney's decision to have a child just shy of her 67th birthday in July.

Embryologist Severino Antinori claims to have treated 3000 women aged between 49 and 63 with IVF, but even he said Adeney was too old to become a mother.

Professor Antinori told the Sunday Times he thought "anything over 63" was risky "because you cannot guarantee the child will have a loving mother or family".

"It is possible to give a child to the mother up to the age of 83 but it is medically criminal to do this because the likelihood is the child will lose his mum and suffer from psychological problems," he continued.

Adeney fell pregnant after undergoing fertility treatment in the Ukraine, a country whose fertility treatment programme Antinori described as "pretty adventurous, to say the least".

Britain's National Health Service does not recommend fertility treatment for women over 40.

The UK's oldest known mother, Patricia Rashbrook, was 62 when she gave birth in 2006.

The oldest mother in the world is believed to be an Indian woman who gave birth at the age of 70 in 2008.

- NZ HERALD STAFF, AAP