A 57 year-old New Hampshire woman gave birth to a healthy baby boy this week five years after she tragically lost her teenage daughter.
NBC Boston reported that Barbara Higgins, who is a teacher, gave birth to a baby boy named Jack on March 20 after undergoing IVF treatment with her husband Kenny Banzhoff.
“We’ve beat the odds,” said Banzhoff, 65. “I’m so proud of her, she’s been a trooper through the whole thing.”
This joyous event comes five years after the couple reportedly lost their 13-year-old daughter Molly to an undiagnosed brain tumor. Higgins said that after Molly passed away, she could not stop thinking about having another child to join their surviving daughter Gracie.
“I started having these dreams that I wanted to have a child, and I thought, ‘OK, Barb, that’s a little crazy,” she said, adding that she could not get rid of the thought that she needed to have another child.
“I attached [the dreams] very much to my grief process, and a couple of years went by where I had this sort of compelling thought in my head that I should have a child,” Higgins told the TODAY show. “The dream was pretty consistent.”
Once they found an IVF clinic in Boston that was willing to help someone Higgins’ age, she and her husband decided to move forward with the pregnancy. She said that her third pregnancy was a smooth one, crediting that to her active lifestyle and weightlifting until the day she gave birth.
“I do a lot of weight training and all of that crazy Crossfit stuff that you hear about,” she explained.
Though the Concord Monitor reported that Higgins is the oldest woman to ever give birth in New Hampshire, she said that age was never a factor in deciding to have a third child.
“Nobody can give birth to a baby and know with a certainty that they will see that baby grow up,” she said, adding that she was “not concerned about external judgments or factors.”
“It’s just us and Jack and our day-to-day life. So far so good,” Higgins said. “Who knows how I’ll be in 10 years, but who knows how you’ll be in 10 years? That isn’t something that anyone can predict, and why should Jack not get to be alive just because I’m old?”
COMMENTS POLICY: We have no tolerance for messages of violence, racism, vulgarity, obscenity or other such discourteous behavior. Thank you for contributing to a respectful and useful online dialogue.