On this date in 1997, representatives of the University of Southern California announced that a 63-year-old woman in their care had given birth to a healthy baby the previous November. Arceli Keh, of Highland, Calif., thus became at the time the world’s oldest documented woman to give birth. The woman had hormone treatment to prepare her for eventual fertilization and frozen embryo transfer. Her physician, Richard Paulson, believed that women have two, rather than one, biological clocks -- one, the clock for ovaries and eggs, seems to run out much sooner than the clock that controls the uterus. This is why egg donation often works well for women who are 40 and older. When Keh’s daughter was born, fewer than 100 deliveries worldwide to women older than 50 had been documented.

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