Her daughter thinks she should be retired "in Florida having a good life". But Frieda Birnbaum wants to inspire older women by proving they can have children "without a stigma".
At 60 Birnbaum has become the oldest woman to give birth to twins in the United States, after undergoing in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) on a trip to Cape Town last year.
The Star-Ledger newspaper reported that last night the as-yet unnamed "Baby A" and "Baby B" were doing well at Hackensack University Medical Centre in New Jersey after being delivered by Caesarean section the previous day.
"This is so wonderful. I feel so relaxed," Birnbaum told Fox News after the birth.
Before her C-section, Birnbaum said she had travelled to Cape Town with Ken, her husband of 38 years, to undergo IVF so her six-year-old son, Ari, would have siblings closer to his age and because she wanted older women to remove some of the stigma attached to older women giving birth.
Ari was also conceived by IVF in a procedure done in New York City.
She told Fox News that she decided to have more children - preferably twins - one stormy day aboard a cruise-liner after reading an article about older women having children.
After she and 63-year-old Ken had tried unsuccessfully to conceive again in New York, they made the decision to come to South Africa after using the Internet to research medical centres that specialise in IVF for older women.
Cape Town - already rated as one of the top holiday venues in the world - has become a preferred destination for "bargain babies", where infertile couples can have treatment and go home pregnant at a fraction of the price it would cost elsewhere. Fertility clinics in the Mother City say they provide quality service equivalent to anything offered abroad, but at far more affordable rates.
With a mother who lived to 89 and a father who reached 92, Birnbaum said she plans to stay active for awhile - not that she considers herself old to begin with.
"My daughter feels I should be living in Florida having a good life," Birnbaum, who counsels women about mid-life issues, told Fox News.
"I hope when she's older, she'll see this and understand she has choices. I don't feel like I'm 60. I don't know what 60 is meant to be."
But while Birnbaum said she looks forward to dressing the boys in matching outfits, her adult son Jason, 33, and daughter Alana, 29 "are appalled", the New York Daily News reported.
"My mother is too old, for health reasons and for lifestyle," Alana said. "I don't think she's thinking about the future - being 80 or 90 and having a kid."
She said her brother is worried they will end up taking care of the babies.
"He's against it even more than I am," Alana told the newspaper.
The babies were delivered by Dr Abdulla al-Khan, the hospital's director of prenatal diagnostics and therapeutics in the department of obstetrics and gynaecology.
"This was high-risk, definitely; there were no guidelines of what to do and what to look for in a pregnancy at the age to 60," Al-Khan told Fox News. "It becomes a little risky to take care of this pregnancy, be cause no one has the experience.
"The question is what is old, it's asked over and over again. And that's a question I don't even know the answer to anymore."
Coincidentally, Tuesday was the birthday of twins born one year ago to a 59-year-old woman - also from New Jersey - Lauren Cohen, who gave birth to Gregory and Giselle at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia.
Cohen said Birnbaum had contacted her after seeing her name in a magazine and that the two quickly became friends.
"We talked about babies; I suggested things that would be helpful when you try to feed two babies simultaneously," Cohen said.
Although Birnbaum broke Cohen's American age record for twins, she is roughly seven years younger than the oldest woman on record who has given birth to twins.
That distinction is held by Spain's Maria del Carmen Bousada Lara, who had twin boys in December 2006, just days she turned 67.
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