Nearing 60 years of age, Lauren Cohen gave birth to male and female twins in 2006.
It should have been a happy time for the mother of two from Paramus, New Jersey, to welcome twins into the family, but she couldn’t have anticipated her eldest daughter’s reaction.
When Lauren met Frank Garcia at a dance class in New Jersey in 2002, she had been divorced from her previous husband for two years.
They fell in love at first sight, despite him being 20 years younger than her.
“I never thought he could be interested in a woman so much older. He was a great dancer so I asked him to dance one night and he said yes,” Lauren said.
They tied the knot in July of 2002, and Lauren quickly realized that her husband was eager to start a family.
They tried to start a family through in vitro fertilization, but several doctors rejected her due to her advanced age.
In January 2004, a Virginia clinic approved her, but the couple gave up after four unsuccessful IVF attempts.
A doctor in New Jersey eventually consented to help, and the couple eventually conceived a child.
Their first daughter, Raquel, was born to them in December 2004 thanks to in vitro fertilization.
Lauren found out she was carrying twins less than a year after Raquel was born.
Lauren gave birth to twins Gregory and Giselle via in vitro fertilization with donor eggs on May 22, 2006, just before her 60th birthday.
“I don’t feel like a record holder. Except for arthritis, I’m in excellent shape,”
According to PEOPLE, at age 36, Lauren became the oldest mother in the United States to give birth to twins, tying the record set by an unnamed British woman on Christmas Day 1993.
Lauren, a mother of three small children, has made it a priority to take care of her health so that she can fulfill her dream of watching her kids graduate from college.
The mother-of-four claimed she did pilates and yoga and took nearly a hundred supplements weekly to stay in shape.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to live as long as I can,” she says. “I’ve set a target of seeing them through college. I’ve got to keep going for 17 years – until I’m 81.
Lauren found it challenging to be an older mother because Renee, her eldest daughter, frequently mistaken her for the children’s grandmother.
She and her husband are grateful for their three children, even if they miss out on spending time with their daughter and granddaughter.