Another baby may not be on the cards, but the 67-year-old Romanian woman who became the world's oldest mother last year says raising her daughter is easier than she thought.
Celebrating her baby girl's first birthday on Monday, Adriana Iliescu said her age had little impact on the controversial pregnancy, her daughter's health or her ability to care for her child.
"I feel very well. I feel perfect," the frail-looking woman with deep wrinkles on her pale face told Reuters.
"I can't describe how I feel when I hug her, when I kiss her. It's a special kind of feeling. And (raising her) is not as tough as I had expected," she said.
"A one-year-old baby is a special kind of a species, something between a human and an angel."
Iliescu, who teaches Romanian language and literature at Hyperion University in Bucharest, gave birth to Eliza-Maria following several attempts at in vitro fertilization from donated eggs and sperm.
Her pregnancy fanned a debate in Romania and internationally about the ethics of older-age parenthood, and Bucharest officials said limits on vitro fertilization would be introduced but no laws have come into force.
The girl was born in the 33rd week pregnancy, weighing 3.1 pounds, after a Caesarean section was performed when her twin sister died in the womb.
She now lives with her mother in a sprawling neighborhood of communist-era blocks of flats, in a small apartment cramped with books, dusty toys and shabby furniture.
On her first birthday, her mother and a nanny proffered her a large plate filled with jewelry, makeup, little toys, books and other trinkets.
"It's a Romanian tradition, on its first birthday a child has to pick three things. Whatever it reaches for, describes its destiny," said Eliza's nanny Mariana Voicu.
"She reached for a measuring tape, jewelry and a religious painting. She will will be flirtatious, maybe a fashion designer and she will believe in God," Voicu said.
Her daughter's future may look hopeful, but Iliescu who is not married and does not have much family or friends admits she had little planned for when she is too frail to take her of Eliza.
"I believe she will be a fighter," said the slightly stooped, thin woman, holding the girl, swathed in a pink sweater and dress, in her arms.
But asked if she would like to have another child, she says: "Sentimentally yes, rationally no."
