According to various accounts, María, who was a retired store employee, sold her house to pay for IVF treatments that would allow her to conceive later in life. Reportedly, she misled doctors at a California fertility clinic by claiming she was 55 years old.
María believed that everyone ought to decide for themselves when to start a family, rather than feeling pressured by social norms or other people’s expectations. In fact, she holds the record as the oldest living mother, having given birth at 66 years and 358 days old in 2006.
Shortly afterward, María was diagnosed with cancer. Speaking to The Guardian at the time, she explained: “Often circumstances put you between a rock and a hard place, and maybe things shouldn’t have been done in the way they were done, but that was the only way to achieve the thing I had always dreamed of.”
Not everyone supported her decision. Some of her harshest critics were her own relatives, who called her selfish. She confessed to hiding her pregnancy initially because she knew her family would be shocked, and indeed, they thought she was joking when she finally shared her news. In 2006, María delivered healthy twin boys, Christian and Pau, becoming the oldest mother on record in the process.