A 46-year-old woman, whose identity has not been released, on Friday gave birth to the first-ever Vietnamese surrogate baby at a hospital in Hanoi.

The baby girl, weighing 3.6kg, was born by C-section, performed by Deputy Minister of Health, Professor and Doctor Nguyen Viet Tien, when the surrogate mother was 38 weeks pregnant.

C-section, also known as cesarean delivery, is a surgical procedure used to deliver a baby through incisions in the mother's abdomen and uterus.

“We had been waiting for this moment for ages and this made us burst with happiness,” Nguyen Thi Ha, the real mother of the newborn, was quoted by newswire VnExpress as saying.

Ha and her husband have been married for 18 years and she was diagnosed infertile three years into their marriage.

In March 2015, Vietnam legalized surrogate pregnancy as it revised the Law on Marriage and Family, and the couple, based in the northern province of Ha Nam, would never miss such a precious chance.

They filed a surrogacy request at the National Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Hanoi, and eventually received the go-ahead to have one of her aunts to be the surrogate mother for the baby they longed to have, according to VnExpress.

The birth of the very first surrogate baby in Vietnam is a significant milestone for families who cannot have natural or IVF children, Deputy Minister Tien told the media after the C-section surgery.

Minister of Health Nguyen Thi Kim Tien is also expected to visit the newborn baby later today.

There are some 100 surrogacy requests eligible for approval in Vietnam, and nearly 30 surrogate babies are expected to enter the world in the next three months, according to VnExpress.

Besides the National Hospital of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Hue Central Hospital in the central province of Thua Thien-Hue and Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City are the only two health care institutions allowed to perform surrogacy.

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