New Hampshire Woman Who Lost Daughter to Brain Tumor Gives Birth at 57

On Saturday, 57-year-old Barb Higgins set a record as the oldest woman in New Hampshire to give birth.

Barb Higgins and husband Ken Banzhoff welcomed Jack Kearsley Banzhoff into the world on March 20, almost a month before he was due on April 13. At under six pounds, Jack is already causing a stir. His arrival makes Higgins the oldest woman to give birth in New Hampshire. “No lie. I’m sitting here at my age thinking, ‘I just had a newborn,’” Higgins told the Concord Monitor. “Yes, I’m scared and I’m anxious, but I’m so excited.”

Jack was born just after noon on Saturday at Concord Hospital, attended by several doctors. Higgins and her husband were trying to have another child for some time after the loss of their daughter Molly to a brain tumor in 2016. While her news son’s birth gives their living daughter another sibling, he is not replacement. “It likely wouldn’t have happened if she was still alive, but she’s not the reason we did it,” Higgins said.

Higgins gave birth to Gracie and Molly while she was still in her thirties. Even then, she felt “like an older mother,” since “all my friends had already had their kids.” Now, on the tail end of her fifties, every part of the process felt significant. Higgins kept the pregnancy a secret until she was 20 weeks along, only telling the closest of her family and friends. When it became visibly obvious around 30 weeks, she expanded the circle.

Fortunately for Higgins, there was support to spare. “The community and culture around childbirth is a phenomenal community,” Higgins said. “Judgment is almost non-existent.” As to the skeptics, Higgins has a simple answer: “For a person who wants to say to me, ‘aren’t you reckless for making this decision?’ Well, no, because I never made a reckless decision.”

While health issues are common in geriatric pregnancy, Higgins asserted that everything was done with medical approval. In fact, she believes the pregnancy may have saved her life. In the process of trying to conceive, doctors discovered she too had a brain tumor. It was successfully removed.

Higgins is familiar with the record books. In her teen years, Higgins was the first woman in the state to run a mile in under five minutes. This new record seems just as compelling. “The athlete in me loves that little stat,” she said. “I also love that it gives some women getting older who think it’s too late, a little hope. I want older women to say ‘see, she did it.’”

“Every time I passed a test or turned a corner, I felt like I was supposed to,” Higgins added. “If it doesn’t work, it’s because I was not able to. It would have been heartbreaking but that’s the way we looked at it.” Now, the recently expanded family is looking toward the future. “I won’t be the only grandparent in the kindergarten line, but I will be the only one who had their own baby,” she said.