Susan Tollefsen is expected to have a Caesarean section next week to deliver her daughter, the Daily Mail reported. If the baby arrives safely, she will become one of the oldest known mothers in the country.

Tollefsen, a special needs teacher, and her partner, Nick Mayer, had been trying for several years to have a child. She had gone through fertility treatment without apparent success and thought she miscarried after the last one.

When her doctor found a "hard abdominal mass," she assumed it must be cancer.

"I was lying on the examination table thinking, 'I'm going to die' when the sonographer turned round to me and said 'Congratulations,'" Tollefsen said. "My initial reaction was to think, 'What a terrible way to tell me I've got ovarian cancer.' When he then said, 'You're pregnant' I was literally speechless."

Now she is expecting the baby she calls a "miracle."