An Indian woman and her husband, both in their 70s, have given birth to their first child after undergoing years of fertility treatment.

Daljinder Kaur delivered the healthy baby boy last month after three rounds of IVF treatment using donor eggs at the National Fertility Centre in the northern state of Haryana, doctors told the Guardian.

Though her exact age is unclear, Kaur told doctors that she is about 72 — about seven years younger than her 79-year-old husband, Mohinder Singh Gill.

If that’s correct, that would make her the world’s oldest mother. The current, verified record is held by the late Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara, who was 66 when she gave birth to twin boys in Barcelona in 2006. (Bousada de Lara died in July 2009 of cancer, leaving her sons orphans before they turned 3.)

Kaur said she and her husband, who have been married for 46 years, had almost given up hope of having a child and for years faced ridicule and problems in a country where infertility is sometimes seen as a curse from God. Gill had to take his father to court after he refused to give him a piece of land or any property due to the couple’s infertility.

They adopted a boy in the 1980s, but he left to study in the U.S. and never returned. The pair finally decided to try IVF after seeing an ad for the clinic in a newspaper.

“God heard our prayers,” Kaur told Agence France-Presse from the northern city of Amritsar. “My life feels complete now.”

Kaur said she feels “full of energy” and is having no trouble looking after the baby. “My husband is also very caring and helps me as much as he can,” she said.

The baby boy, named Arman, was delivered via caesarean section on April 19. Doctors at the clinic say he is “healthy and hearty” and weighed 4.4 pounds at birth.

The National Fertility Centre, run by Dr. Anurag Bishnoi, has made headlines in the past over the age of his patients. His clinic takes credit for several pregnancies in elderly couples, including that of Rajo Devi, who was thought to be 70 when she first conceived in 2006. Another woman became the mother of triplets at 66, according to the clinic’s website.

Though IVF treatment in elderly women is becoming increasingly common in India due to lax regulations and relatively cheap costs, the country’s medical community has largely denounced the procedure for seniors like Kaur.

“We condemn this totally. With science, you can make a 90-year-old person pregnant. The question is not about technicalities, it’s about ethics. Our responsibility is to the patient,” said Dr. Hrishikesk Pai, head of India’s federation of gynecologists.

Another gynecologist, Dr. Anshu Jindal, told AFP that women over the age of 60 should not be undergoing fertility treatment, for the sake of both mother and child.

“It will take a serious toll on both of them. The sheer fact that a woman in her 70s has to carry the weight of a child in her womb for nine months is stressful,” Jindal said. There is also the obvious question of how parents of that age can look after a baby, he said.

“That is also quite a task.”

Bishnoi told the Guardian he was initially reluctant to perform the procedure but decided it was safe after a series of medical tests showed Kaur was fit and healthy, and the risk to her health was no higher than if she had been middle-aged.

He says that while he recognizes there are ethical issues, the patient’s choices should be respected and restrictions need to be equally enforced among both genders.

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“For them, it is a time of great happiness,” Bishnoi said. “Especially because her brother also didn’t have any children. They were two families, and both didn’t have children. In Indian law they don’t allow adoption after 45 years of age.”

Gill told AFP he was unfazed by the couple’s age. “People say, ‘What will happen to the child once we die?’ But I have full faith in God. God is omnipotent and omnipresent. He will take care of everything.”