'I have no regrets': Deathbed words of world's oldest mother who kept cancer secret from twins

By James Tapper, Mail on Sunday Showbusiness Reporter
Updated:

The world's oldest mum insisted on her deathbed she had 'no regrets' about having children at the age of 66.

Carmen Bousada´s death last week left IVF twins Christian and Pau orphaned at the age of two-and-a-half.

The 69-year-old was bedridden and virtually blind when she said a tearful goodbye to her children after a long battle with the cancer.

Maria Carmen del Bousada

Secret: Maria Carmen del Bousada, 69, didn't tell her sons about her cancer because she felt they were too young to understand

But in an interview given the day before she died, Ms Bousada said she felt no  remorse about her controversial decision to become a mother 18 years after going through the menopause.

She had tricked US doctors into giving her IVF treatment, telling them she was 55.

Speaking to a Spanish TV show on the eve of her death on July 12 she said: 'I  have no regrets.

'I am calm because I see the children are happy.

'I'm happy because the children are my life. I would like to have done more  things.

'I'm not afraid of what´s going to happen. I just don´t want to go yet.

'I would like God to have left me the way I was, before I was ill, so I could  have enjoyed a few more years with my sons.

'But knowing they will be looked after by my family does give me peace of mind.'

In her last TV interview, for a Channel 4 documentary called The World’s Oldest Mums, Miss Bousada said: ‘They’re too young for these things. They’re still babies. I’m still hoping they can treat me.

I know it would be a miracle.’

She insisted her doctors had said her cancer was unrelated to the aggressive hormone treatment she received to reverse the menopause so she could become pregnant. 

Miss Bousada’s 35-year-old nephew is now raising her sons. Her brother Ricardo, 70, described her last few days as ‘very bad’.

‘The children visited the day before she died but by then she could hardly see them,’ he said. ‘She was so bad she was wanting to die at the end.  

‘I saw one of the children as they were leaving and asked, “Were you able to see mummy?” He told me, “Yes, she’s sleeping.”’

Most watched News videos