No Regrets About Having Her Baby at 62

Rosanna Della Corte divides her affection between “big” Riccardo and “little” Riccardo.

The first is the teenager who died six years ago; the second is her other son, the one she gave birth to when she was 62 and desperate for a reason to keep on living.

The sticky air and suffocating heat of these recent days remind her of both sons.

“It was just like this when I was resting in bed, waiting to give birth to Riccardo,” says Della Corte, who is now 65.

She was referring to her 3-year-old, whose arrival July 18, 1994, made Della Corte the oldest person on record at that time to give birth.

At times, it is hard to tell just which Riccardo the mother has in mind.

Is she talking about the chubby-faced, irrepressible toddler who swipes at lipstick, lifts up skirts and yanks wheels off whining toy cars?

Or is she drifting back to the serious young man with glasses in the photographs that crowd a table in the entrance hall, line the fireplace mantel and top the counters in the kitchen, the son who was struck by a car as he rode his motorbike to the beach.

Severino Antinori is the Rome gynecologist who treated Della Corte with hormones so her womb could carry “Riccardo piccolo” for nine months. The embryo was created from the egg of an unidentified young donor and from sperm from Della Corte’s husband, Mauro, who is two years older than his wife.

How Riccardo was created inspired calls in Italy for legislation banning in vitro fertilization for menopausal women who are over the age of 51, the average age of menopause.

Pushing the limits of nature also provoked moral condemnation. The Vatican newspaper called such a feat a “challenge to God Himself.”

At first, the Della Cortes knocked on the doors of orphanages looking for a child to take the place of the older Riccardo. But Italian law forbids adoption by parents who would be more than 40 years older than the child.

About six months after Riccardo died, Della Corte noticed a newspaper account of how Antinori helped an Italian woman in her late 50s give birth.

She became pregnant after the first in vitro fertilization, but miscarried after 40 days. The seventh attempt resulted in Riccardo.

This afternoon, mother and son got a lift to the park, but sometimes, Della Corte says, she carries the 46-pound Riccardo in her arms the half-mile there.

“I still feel strong,” she says. “I want to go on. I don’t feel old.”

Antinori says he will help post-menopausal women become pregnant only if they are healthy and if the couple’s own parents have lived to a ripe old age, a sign longevity might run in the family.

Mauro Della Corte, just recuperating from surgery for varicose veins, says he has no doubts he and his wife will be alive--and in their 80s--when their son is in high school.

Mauro Della Corte, an architect by profession, oversees 123 acres of olive trees, grain and vineyards which, his wife said, will one day be Riccardo’s.

Riccardo is spoiled, and Rosanna Della Corte wants it that way.

She paused before volunteering that when she decided to have “little” Riccardo, motherhood, not mortality, was on her mind.

“I didn’t want to think of these things, but now, every so often, I do think of them,” she says. “I think, ‘Did I make a mistake, did I do wrong?’ Then I see him smiling, playing, and I know I did right.