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From Sanchia Berg, who is a reporter for the Today Programme.
The maternity hospital's lecture theatre was an unfortunate setting for the press conference. The romanian media had been calling the birth of little Eliza Iliescu a "medical breakthrough" - yet her record making mother was to meet journalists in a shabby gloomy room, streaked with damp, which looked as though it hadn't been painted since Ceaucescu fell. On the blackboard someone had written quotes in romanian: amongst them one from Oscar Wilde: "Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope".
As Adriana Iliescu was helped into the room, I found myself squashed against the table - crouching down - so our eyes were three feet apart. She looked extraordinarily well for a woman of her age, let alone one who had just been through 33 weeks of pregnancy, the sudden death of one twin in utero , and an emergency caesarian section to save the other. She seemed delighted to meet the press, and she was ready for it. Her hair was coiffed, her lipstick freshly applied, distracting attention from her well lined face. Her voice was faint but she spoke with great passion.
She had seen "the child" as she called her daughter for the first time that morning, two days after her birth. The child had held her finger and she had felt a special bond between them. Adriana Iliescu said she believed she had fulfilled her mission in life, and that no sacrifice was too great for such a goal. She said she hoped the child would inherit her sense of spirituality and love of literature. She brushed aside questions about the future, saying that noone knew what would happen. She went off into philosophical raptures -- talking about the role of the sacred, about how every human being was God's creation. One romanian commentator later called her "delirious" -- which was not quite right -- but she did seem extraordinarily euphoric, as many first time mothers are.
While the church, politicians and the romanian press have been quick to criticise adriana iliescu and the doctors responsible, most romanian people we spoke to were very supportive of her. The health minister told me that people see this as a triumph of the one person against overwhelming odds -- that romanians have become so bitter and disillusioned with institutions and the state, that they celebrate the individual who wins through. He believed that if people would start to consider the child, HER future, and whether this was something society should encourage or not, they would change their minds. But he said after more than 50 years of communism, it was hard to get people to believe in common values.
I have been to Bucharest several times before, but in the first years after Ceaucescu fell. People did seem to be more optimistic then, which is strange because now Romania is within NATO, and a short distance from that promised land of full membership of the European Union. There used to be wonderful jokes about the Ceaucescus: I asked a Romanian journalist for a modern joke. "We have no jokes about romania these days" he said "because everything here now is a joke".
Sanchia
Listen again to related discussions:
Should there be an age limit for fertility treatment in Britain?
A 66 year old woman who gave birth at the weekend has spoken for the first time.
Sanchia Berg has the details.
Should women be able to give birth at whatever age or should there be an age limit?
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