Seventy-year-old Omkari Singh and her husband were not just parents to two adult daughters. The couple from northern India was also grandparents to five children.
Yet they were determined to have a male child who would inherit the family’s small business ventures.
So, Omkari started IVF treatment, her husband (Charan Singh Panwar – seven years older than her) selling his priced buffaloes, mortgaging his land, taking out a credit card loan and spending all of his life’s savings to pay for the IVF treatment.
And luck smiled on their efforts and their plan succeeded.
Omkari was carrying twins and that really shocked the doctors immensely.
“I’ve been in medicine for 20 years and I have never heard of such a case,” Omkari’s gynecologist said.
After a hectic and painful pregnancy, the twins – a boy and a girl – were delivered by emergency C-section.
That was how Omkari become the world’s oldest mother of twins.
They were born one month premature, each weighing two pounds. So, their mother left them in the hospital.
“We have not been able to see or hold them all this time,” Omkari said. “They had to stay in the hospital because they were so small. We could not afford to stay there, so we had to leave them.”
She added: “We paid all this money to the doctors for a son but now we have the extra burden of another daughter as well.”
All these happened in 2008.
Although iInitially doctors said both babies were healthy, at the age of four the female twin named Barsaat tragically passed away.
Akashvani – the boy – is now growing up nicely.
To this day, people often mistake her for her son’s grandmother, Omkari said.
