Vivienne Young. INSET Adriana lliescuROMANIAN academic Adriana Iliescu can hardly be surprised by the disapproval that greeted news this week of the birth of her child Eliza, say Swindon mothers.

It would be a predictable response to any single woman who for nine years persisted with fertility treatment until she succeeded in becoming pregnant at the age of 66 after being inseminated artificially.

She conceived three babies, but two died in the womb. The third was delivered by caesarian section weighing less than half the average for a new-born and is now in intensive care.

Ms Iliescu has described the birth as fulfilment of a dream.

"I believed all my life that a woman has the right to give birth," she said.

"A woman who has not had a child has not led a complete life and one of the reasons for being on earth is to give birth." If she thinks that, said retired teacher Vivienne Young of Ham Road, Liddington, why the hell did she wait so long?

The answer, it seems, is that the Romanian professor didn't want to interrupt her career.

Vivienne, mother of two and grandmother of five, is a graduate and just a year younger than Ms Iliescu.

"This woman is utterly selfish," she said. "In fact I think she is wicked.

"Having a baby at 66 has made her happy, but how much thought has she given to the happiness and wellbeing of her baby.

"By the time the child reaches 20 the mother, if she lives that long, will be 87." Vivienne was 26 when her first child Vanessa was born and 28 when her second, Tim, arrived.

"We are programmed by God, or whoever we believe created us, to have children while we are young enough to look after them.

"I love looking after my grandchildren, but I know I couldn't cope now with full-time responsibility for small children."

Swindon's own supermum Sue Povey she and her husband Ian have a family of 15 also has reservations about Adriana Iliescu's happy event.

"She could have experienced the dream she talks about when she was younger," said 45-year-old Sue.

"If a woman has a baby naturally at 45 or 50 and has a partner that's one thing. But IVF for women who are as old as this one is wrong." Patrick Cusworth of anti-abortion organisation Life questioned the ethics of the fertility specialists who made Ms Iliescu's pregnancy possible.

"Was the doctor just trying to get his name or face in the record books?" he asked.

And Josephine Quintaville, director of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics believes women should be outraged by her story.

"A woman at grandmother age shouldn't be having children," she said.

But British fertility expert Professor Lord Robert Winston thinks the matter is hardly worthy of debate.

"There's no need to rake over this Romanian lady," he said. "Frankly, so what? I don't think it's going to have an impact on IVF in the UK."

Shirley Mathias