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EDITOR'S NOTE -- In April it was announced that a 63-year-old, post-menopausal American woman had given birth to a healthy girl a year earlier, beating the record set by a 62-year-old Italian woman in 1994. The previous record-holder, now mother to a lively 3-year-old toddler, sometimes has second thoughts about her decision.
Rosanna Della Corte divides her affection between "big" Riccardo and "little" Riccardo.
The first is the teen-ager who died six years ago; the second is her other son, the one she gave birth to when she was 62 and desperate for a reason to keep on living.
The sticky air and suffocating heat of these recent days remind her of both sons.
"It was just like this when I was resting in bed, waiting to give birth to Riccardo," says Mrs. Della Corte of Canino, Italy, who is now 65.
She was referring to her 3-year-old, whose arrival July 18, 1994, made Mrs. Della Corte the oldest person on record at that time to give birth.
At times, it is hard to tell just which Riccardo the mother has in mind.
Is she talking about the chubby-faced, irrepressible toddler who swipes at lipstick, lifts up skirts and yanks wheels off whining toy cars?
Or is she drifting back to the serious young man with glasses in the photographs that crowd a table in the entrance hall, line the fireplace mantel and top the counters in the kitchen, the son who was struck by a car as he rode his motorbike to the beach.
"It was right about this hour, 2 p.m., when he was killed," she says. "I always waited on the balcony for him, waited for him to come home from the sea with his friends. But that day it was so hot, and I was tired, and I was resting in bed when the phone call came to tell me Riccardo was dead."
Little Riccardo was supposed to be born July 27.
"When Dr. Antinori told me that," she recalls, "I said, 'No, no. That was the date Riccardo was killed.' "
Severino Antinori is the Rome gynecologist who treated Mrs. Della Corte with hormones so her womb could carry "Riccardo piccolo" for nine months. The embryo was created from the egg of an unidentified young donor and from sperm from Mrs. Della Corte's husband, Mauro, who is two years older than his wife.
"I would not have done it if I still had Riccardo," she says. "It is not because I wanted to be a mother at 62."
How Riccardo was created inspired calls in Italy for legislation banning in-vitro fertilization for menopausal women who are over the age of 51, the average age of menopause.
Pushing the limits of nature also provoked moral condemnation. The Vatican newspaper called such a feat a "challenge to God Himself."
At first, the Della Cortes knocked on the doors of orphanages looking for a child to take the place of the older Riccardo. But Italian law forbids adoption by parents who would be more than 40 years older than the child.
"They told me, 'You should be a grandmother, not a mother,' " Mrs. Della Corte recalls.
She spent her days in the cemetery in this town in the countryside dotted with Etruscan tombs about 50 miles northwest of Rome.
About six months after Riccardo died, Mrs. Della Corte noticed a newspaper account of how Dr. Antinori helped an Italian woman in her late 50s give birth.
"Mauro said, 'If she can do it, you can, too.' "
Mrs. Della Corte became pregnant after the first in-vitro fertilization, but miscarried after 40 days. The seventh attempt resulted in Riccardo.
"Riccardo, give me a kiss." Riccardo smacked one on her cheek, and Mrs. Della Corte beamed.
With the indulgence and patience of a grandma, Mrs. Della Corte looked on sweetly as he worked his mischief. Only when he threatened to hurl her silver teapot collection across the room did she let out a loud "Ree-CAR-do."
His name echoed through the streets as mother and child took their afternoon outing in the pine-shaded park that serves as town square for Canino's 5,000 souls.
"Curly top," called out one girl heading to buy an ice cream cone and stopping to toss his fluffy hair.
"Riccardo is a beautiful surprise," says Alessio Burlini, 16. His birth "is accepted by everyone ... It's a beautiful thing."
This afternoon, mother and son got a lift to the park, but sometimes, Mrs. Della Corte says, she carries the 46-pound Riccardo in her arms the half-mile there.
"I still feel strong," she says. "I want to go on. I don't feel old."
Her skin is tight, her figure trim, with no sign of middle-age spread or old-age stooping.
"She looks lively enough, like her son," says Antonia Marinacci, 41, mother of another tot sharing a seesaw with Riccardo. His birth "made her younger."
Riccardo is spoiled, and Mrs. Della Corte wants it that way.
"If I were younger, I'd deny him things," she says. "Someday I'm afraid I'll leave him alone and he'll not have had everything that a mother can give."
Dr. Antinori says he will help post-menopausal women become pregnant only if they are healthy and if the couple's own parents have lived to a ripe old age, a sign longevity might run in the family.
Mauro Della Corte, just recuperating from surgery for varicose veins, says he has no doubts he and his wife will be alive -- and in their 80s -- when their son is in high school.
"My parents lived to be 89," he says. "If I live to be 85, he'll be 21. When the other Riccardo was 15, he could run the farm."
Mr. Della Corte, an architect by profession, oversees 123 acres of olive trees, grain and vineyards which, his wife said, will one day be Riccardo's.
Mrs. Della Corte paused before volunteering that when she decided to have "little" Riccardo, motherhood, not mortality, was on her mind.
"I didn't want to think of these things, but now, every so often, I do think of them," she says. "I think, 'Did I make a mistake, did I do wrong?' Then I see him smiling, playing, and I know I did right.
"When he's big, he'll be told. When he's 5, I'll say that mommy wanted to have a baby and there was a doctor who helped me.
"When he's even bigger I'll tell him there was this woman and she gave this egg and now she's dead."
And if Riccardo doesn't believe the lie, and wants to know his biological mother?
"I'll tell him, 'I gave you my blood for nine months. There's nothing of that lady in you. I'm the mother.' "
A year after Riccardo's birth, Mrs. Della Cortes considered having a second child, but abandoned the idea after the ethical and medical flap.
Sometimes Riccardo stops and looks at the rows of snapshots of the "other" Riccardo.
"He says, 'I have a brother, but he's in a photograph,' " his mother says, with a sad smile.
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