A 66-year-old Berlin woman has given birth to a healthy baby boy, her 10th child and the eighth since turning 50.
Alexandra Hildebrandt is a well-known figure in Berlin public life as owner and manager of the Checkpoint Charlie museum dedicated to the city’s decades of division and escape attempts from East Berlin.
In recent years, though, she has attracted more headlines for her renewed embrace of motherhood – after giving birth to her first child in 1977.
This week, she announced the arrival last Wednesday of Philipp, her 10th child by Caesarean section, after an “uncomplicated” pregnancy.
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Ms Hildebrandt told the Tagesspiegel daily she noticed “no difference” to previous pregnancies.
Asked by the Bild tabloid why she wanted a 10th child, she said: “Why not, if I can?”
Dr Wolfgang Heinrich, director of obstetrics at Berlin’s Charité university clinic, said Ms Hildebrandt was “the oldest pregnant woman I have ever cared for at the Charité”.
“It was a largely uncomplicated pregnancy,” he added, “Thanks to her mental strength and good physical constitution, she got through it so well.”
Dr Heinrich told Berlin broadcaster RBB that the chances of a natural pregnancy beyond the age of 40 are “below 10 per cent”.
Ms Hildebrandt said in one interview it was a “private matter” how she became pregnant, insisting in another that she became pregnant through natural means: “I eat very healthily, swim regularly for an hour, run for two hours, don’t drink and smoke and have never used contraception.”
Ms Hildebrandt said she and her husband, a former politician, had just bought a new house in the Berlin suburbs where every child would have its own room.
“It’s nice when everyone sits round a big table in the diningroom,” she told Bild. “That’s how I imagine family.”
