New Hampshire teacher Barbara Higgins gave birth to her third child last Saturday and both mom and baby boy Jack are healthy and doing well. But the path Higgins and her husband, Kenny Banzhoff, took to bring their bundle of joy into the world is what makes this story unique. And it starts with the fact that this mama is 57, which makes her one of the oldest women on record to ever give birth in the U.S.
Higgins says her pregnancy was easy and she credits this to her active lifestyle. The lifelong athlete says she was lifting weights until the day she went into labor, adding that she does “all that crazy CrossFit stuff you hear about.” But the path to pregnancy wasn’t easy for a woman in her late 50s. She was determined to have another baby after losing their 13-year-old daughter, Molly, who died suddenly from an undiagnosed brain tumor in 2016.
As she worked through her grief, Higgins says she became consumed with getting pregnant again and her husband was on board, so they found an IVF clinic that would treat a woman her age and went for it. “We’ve beat the odds, the proud dad says. As for the people who wonder why a couple in their 50s would have a baby, these parents ask, “why not?” “I don’t know how I will be in 10 years, but how will you be in 10 years,” Higgins asks, adding, “And why should Jack not get to be alive because I’m old?”
