How many children were in the largest family. The mother-heroine from Russia got into the Guinness Book of Records The maximum number of children born at one time

The historical record belongs to the Russian Vasiliev family, who lived in the 18th century. The wife of Fyodor Vasiliev, Shuisky, gave birth in her life to 69. The woman to this day is the record holder of childbearing and is listed in the Guinness Book.

For more than 200 years, no one in the world has been able to repeat or beat this record. The advantage of the peasant woman was her genetics, which made it possible to produce children in 27 births. Vasilyeva gave birth to twins 16 times (another world record), triplets and four quadruplets were born seven times. Unfortunately, only 67 children survived to adulthood.

It is worth noting that this record is not the final point for Fedor Vasiliev himself. The peasant was married twice. In his first marriage, he had 20 more children. As a result, there were 87 children in a large family. This fact was appreciated even by Catherine the Great, and information about such a large offspring is included in the book "Additions to the Acts of Emperor Peter the Great."

Historians are still arguing about the birth order of the children of the peasant Vasiliev. However, the facts gleaned from house books and issues of the Vedomosti newspaper testify to the excessive fertility of the second wife.

The largest families of our time

If not a single woman has managed to beat the record of the peasant woman Vasilyeva to this day, Fedor Vasilyev himself, with a noticeable advantage, was ahead of the modern Hindu Zion Chan (Sion Khan). A polygamist will be born to 94 children.

An Indian man was able to conceive so many children thanks to his wives - Zion Chan has 39 of them. A huge family lives in a common multi-storey building. The wives of sons and grandchildren of the father-hero live in it. According to conservative estimates, about 180 people live in the house.

According to the father of the family, they begin to prepare for dinner in their house before breakfast. As a rule, wives take part in cooking. To feed so many people, more than a dozen chickens and several carts of vegetables are spent on one meal.

In those countries where polygamy is prohibited, the records are distinguished by "modesty". Leontina Albina, a resident of Chile, came closest to the Vasilyevsky record. She managed to give birth to 55 children and was also listed in the Book of Records.

In modern Russia, there are heroes of childbearing. Today they are Elena and Alexander Shishkin. A Pentecostal family (a branch of Christianity where abortion is strictly prohibited) gave birth to 20 children. Nineteen of them still live with their parents, and the eldest son already has his own family and three kids.

Americans Bob and Michelle Duggar, active supporters of Christianity, did not think about a large family. Initially, their plans included giving life to two or three children. However, after the birth of her first baby and subsequent contraception, the woman suffered a miscarriage that almost cost her her life. After that, the husband and wife decided not to interfere with "God's plans", and surrendered to the will of fate. As a result, they became one of the largest families in America, having given birth and raised 19 children. There could have been more babies, but Michelle's three births ended in the death of babies.

Record number of births

Elizabeth Greenhill, a resident of the UK, got into the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of births. This woman gave birth 38 times. She only had twins once. Elizabeth died in 1681, leaving behind a "rich" inheritance in the form of 32 daughters and 7 sons.

Only another mother-heroine from Italy, Maddalena Granata, can compare with Elizabeth. During her life she was pregnant 15 times and each time she had 3 children at once.

History also knows cases of multiple pregnancies, when 11 children were born to one woman at once. This happened at the end of the 20th century in the USA and Bangladesh. In both cases, not a single child survived.

Record number of embryos
Unfortunately, in almost all cases of multiple pregnancy (more than 10 embryos), if it comes to childbirth, then the chances of survival for such babies are negligible. In 1971, in Italy, Dr. Gennaro Montanino performed an abortion on a 35-year-old woman from whose uterus he removed 15 embryos! 5 of them were male and 10 were female. The operation was carried out for a period of 4 months. In the course of long trials, the doctors came to the conclusion that such an anomaly was a side effect of taking fertility pills.

In the same year, in Australia, a woman gave birth to 9 children - 5 boys and 4 girls. 2 boys were born dead, the rest of the children lived no more than a week.

At various times in the middle of the 20th century, reports came from China, Brazil and Spain about the birth of 10 children at once. There is no information about whether the babies survived or not.

In early 2009, a resident of the United States, Nadia Suleiman, gave birth to eight children at once. The media gave her the nickname "Octomam". The weight of six boys and two girls ranged from 800 to 1400 g. All children are alive and well. It is noteworthy that the American has never been married and before this birth she already had six children.

The largest number of children born to one woman
History knows a woman who gave birth to 69 children. The wife of a Russian peasant between 1725 and 1765 gave birth 27 times. The woman gave birth 4 times to 4 children, 7 times to 3 and 16 times to twins. All children, except for two, survived.

Another prolific mother is Leontina Albina from Chile. She gave birth to 55 children, and the first 5 times were born 3 babies and only boys.

The largest father in history
For some reason, all records relating to children are tied to mothers. However, history also knows the most large father - this is Yakov Kirillov. From his first marriage, he had 57 children, and from the second - 15. In total, it turns out that a man became a father 72 times. For this, in 1755 he was presented to the court at the age of 60.

Grandfather-record holder
Another man set a kind of record in the field of childbearing. This is a modern resident of Novokuznetsk Alexey Shapovalov. He is called the richest grandfather in the world. Alexey has 11 sons and two daughters, who gave him a total of 117 grandchildren. Those, in turn, have already managed to “reward” grandfather with 33 great-grandchildren.

The purpose of a woman is motherhood. And almost all women in the world go through this difficult and at the same time joyful path - the birth and upbringing of children. For some, this path is accompanied by interesting records.

1. Mother who gave birth to 2 pairs of different-colored twins

Alison Spooner, from the British city of Fleet, gave birth to two daughters in 2001. Lauren looks like her mother - she has red hair, white skin and blue eyes. And the dark-skinned brunette Hiley looks like her father, the Indian Dean.

Doctors then said that this happens once every few years. However, the second pair of twins that were born to the Spooners also has a different skin color.

The younger girls had breathing problems when they were born. So they were placed in separate pressure chambers, says Dean. - Then we saw them together. And they realized that they had created a natural phenomenon again.

Mia and Leah were born on November 13, 2008, a few weeks premature. The first months I spent with my mother in the hospital. Currently, healthy girls are already at home. In the family they are called Marshmallow and Chocolate.

I think no one doubts that our family is special, says Alison.

2. The mother who gave birth to the tiniest baby in the world.

Mahajabeen Sheikh gave birth to Ramasha Rahman on September 19, 2004. The child weighed 243.81 grams at birth, his body length was only 10 cm. Ramash became the smallest newborn in the world. The baby was born at 25 weeks pregnant.

Prior to Ramashi's birth, the tiniest child to survive the birth was Madeline Mann, born in 1989, who weighed 37 grams more than Ramashi.

Ramashi has a twin sister and her birth weight was 567 grams.

According to the Lyol ​​University Medical Center, the girl is now alive and well.

3. The oldest mom in the world

Indian Rayo Devi Lohan (Rajo Devi Lohan) became the first mother at 70 years old, after 40 years of unsuccessful attempts to get pregnant. The child was born in 2008 and feels great, of course, his mother is going to breastfeed him up to 3 years!

The largest mother in history

The largest mother in the world is our compatriot, the wife of a native of the Shuya district, a peasant Fyodor Vasiliev. The first twins in their family were born in 1725 and then for forty years the great woman in labor gave her husband 69 children and never children were born one at a time. In a peasant family, 17 twins, 7 triplets and 4 quadruplets were born. The number of twins is also a world record.

5. The oldest mother who gave birth to twins

The irresistible desire to have a son turned into double happiness for 70-year-old Omkari Panwar! She gave birth to twins. In order to artificially conceive a child, the family sold and mortgaged almost all their property. The woman already had two daughters and five grandchildren, but 77-year-old husband Charan Singh Panwar insisted on an heir and as a result received as many as two.

But Carol Horlock set a world record for fertility as a surrogate mother (Carol is now 43 years old). For 13 years, she was able to endure and give birth to 12 children, including triplets. In an interview with one of the TV shows, the woman admitted that she planned to become a surrogate mother only once, but then she could not stop. Of the pluses, she notes the material side (still - 25-30 thousand dollars per child), but the minuses include morning sickness, bed rest, stretch marks and a caesarean section.

Carol admits that surrogacy has become a real job for her.

7. The youngest mother in the world

The youngest mother in the history of medical practice was Lina Medina, she gave birth at the age of 5 years 7 months. The reason for going to the hospital was a suspicion of a tumor and an increase in the abdominal cavity. But what was the surprise of the doctors and the girl's parents when it turned out that she was 7 months pregnant. A month and a half later, by caesarean section, Lina gave birth to a boy. Doctors studied this phenomenon in detail, it turned out that the girl had reached puberty by the age of 4!

8. Gave birth to 8 children at a time

But Nadya Denise Doud-Suleman Gutierrez (Nadya Denise Doud-Suleman Gutierrez) in January 2009 gave birth to 8 children at once. This was only the second case with a successful outcome of the birth of eight children at once, before that this happened in the United States in 1998. It should be noted that the mother of many children is unemployed, the kids were conceived artificially, and 6 more babies are waiting for her at home!

9. World record for time difference between births

Elizabeth Ann Buttle has set the world record for birth difference. This difference was 41 years! Her first child, a girl, was born on May 19, 1956, when Elizabeth was 19 years old, she gave birth to her second at 60. The boy was named Joseph.

10. The first pregnant man in the world

Looking at this stately man, it is unlikely that the thought will come to mind that once he was a woman. But this is a fact: Thomas was born a woman and her name was Tracy Lagondino (Tracy LaGondino), but at the age of 10 he realized that it was not him and set the goal of his life to become a man. 8 years have passed and Thomas seriously began to fulfill his cherished dream with the help of many operations and hormone therapy, oddly enough, Thomas left his feminine dignity untouched.

The world's smallest mother has given birth to her third child, despite doctors' warnings that it would threaten her life.

Stacey Herald, 36, a native of Dry Ridge, Kentucky, USA, is only 72 cm tall. Doctors immediately told her that a fully formed fetus could easily kill her, because. her internal organs are too small, but despite this, Stacey has already given birth to three children.

Stacy suffers from osteogenesis and spends most of her time in a wheelchair, so all duties fall on the shoulders of the father of the family, whose height is more than 1.73 meters.

Image copyright getty

Carrying and raising even one child is a rather laborious task. However, historical documents claim that a certain woman gave birth to as many as 69 children. Is it true? And will modern medicine be able to expand women's reproductive opportunities? The correspondent is looking for answers to these questions

If the British yellow press existed in the 18th century, the story of the family of the Russian peasant Fyodor Vasiliev would have caused her crazy excitement.

What's the matter? It is believed that Vasiliev's first wife, whose name history has not preserved, holds the world record for the number of children born.

According to a message sent to Moscow by the monks of the Nikolsky Monastery, between 1725 and 1765, Vasilyeva managed to give birth to 16 pairs of twins, give birth to triplets seven times, and quadruples four times.

She gave birth, respectively, 27 times, total - 69 children.

One can only wonder how a modern newspaper editor would have reacted to such fertility, especially given the buzz surrounding the mother of octuals, Nadia Suleman (nicknamed "Octomam" and father of 14 children) and the British Radford family (their 17 children were featured in a TV documentary).

So, is it possible in principle to give birth to more than 60 children?

A woman could theoretically mother more children than we ever thought possible.

"Something from the realm of fantasy. Well, imagine 69 children? Come on!" says James Segars, director of reproductive and women's health research at Johns Hopkins University.

I decided to take a closer look at this surprising (and, at first glance, dubious) statement by consulting reproduction experts.

I was hoping to find out what the physical limits were to the number of children a woman could have naturally.

Along the way, it was discovered that thanks to the achievements of modern science, a woman can theoretically become the mother of more children than we ever thought possible.

Image copyright getty Image caption In the UK only 1.5% of pregnancies are twins and only 0.0003% chance of triplets

First, let's deal with the mathematical part of the Vasiliev story. Are 27 pregnancies possible in the 40 years in question?

At first it seems that there is nothing contrary to common sense in this - especially considering that triplets and quadruplets are usually born at earlier dates.

It turns out that in total Vasilyeva was pregnant for 18 years.

Let's make approximate calculations: 16 twins for 37 weeks; seven triplets at 32 weeks; four quarters of 30 weeks. It turns out that in total Vasilyeva was pregnant for 18 years out of 40. She was drawn to salty things - and so on for a couple of decades.

Another question is whether this is possible in reality.

First of all, it is necessary to understand whether a woman is able to maintain a constant readiness for childbearing over such a long period.

As a rule, the first menstruation in women occurs around the age of 15: every 28 days, an egg is released from their ovaries - usually one.

Ovulation is repeated until the ovaries are depleted of eggs during menopause, which occurs around the age of 51.

Image copyright getty Image caption Most women cannot get pregnant after the age of 45. Is there enough time to give birth to 69 children?

However, a woman's ability to conceive decreases sharply long before the onset of menopause.

"The chance of getting pregnant for a 45-year-old woman is about 1% per month," says Valerie Baker, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Aging women leads to a decrease in the number and quality of eggs. In the process of intrauterine development, a female embryo can have up to seven million immature eggs, and about a million remain at birth.

The ability to get pregnant decreases with each pregnancy, because each subsequent birth affects the body

An adult woman retains only a few hundred thousand eggs. Of this many cells inside the follicles, approximately 400 reach maturity and participate in ovulation, providing their carrier with approximately 30 years of potential childbearing.

The last eggs, which ovulate at the end of a woman's reproductive years, are much more at risk for mutations, genetic abnormalities, and other problems associated with aging.

Often, pregnancies involving such atypical eggs end spontaneously.

“Most women are not able to get pregnant after they reach 42-44 years old,” says James Segars. “But sometimes it happens closer to 50 years.”

Image copyright getty Image caption Women only have about a million eggs at birth, and the number is steadily declining.

Moreover, the ability to get pregnant decreases with each pregnancy, because each subsequent birth affects the female reproductive system.

And if Vasilyeva breastfed her children - which is logical for a peasant woman who could not afford a nurse - ovulation did not occur in her body. This natural method of contraception would further reduce her chances of 69 pregnancies.

It turns out that Fedor and his wife were very lucky (or perhaps unlucky) that even after she reached 50 years old, she had no problems with having new children.

survive childbirth

And that's not all the difficulties associated with the birth of 69 babies.

Evolution has taken care of slowing down the female "biological clock", because bearing and giving birth to a child is an extremely difficult task, which only becomes more difficult with age.

"Restrictions must be set by nature itself," says Valerie Baker. "Pregnancy is the most stressful process a woman's body has ever gone through."

Image copyright SPL Image caption The birth of multiple twins or triplets could theoretically lead to a large number of children in the family, but the health risks are high.

How burdensome childbirth is for a woman gives the greatest reason to doubt the veracity of the story about 69 children - especially considering that the case was a couple of centuries ago in the Russian outback.

In developed countries, the availability of modern obstetric care (such as medically induced caesarean sections) has reduced maternal mortality.

In Britain, there are only eight deaths of women from pregnancy-related causes per 100,000 births during pregnancy or six weeks after it ends. These are the latest World Bank statistics.

Meanwhile, in one of the poorest countries on earth, Sierra Leone, the rate is 1,100 deaths per 100,000 births.

The tendency to have twins is usually hereditary. Maybe Vasilyeva expressed it especially brightly?

In this regard, the assumption that the wife of Fyodor Vasiliev survived 27 births is doubtful.

"Before, any pregnancy was a risk to the mother's life," explains Segars. With multiple births (for example, with the birth of a quadruple), the risk of serious life-threatening complications increases rapidly.

"Every pregnancy at that time was difficult, even if only one child was born," says Jonathan Tilly of Northeastern University (USA), who is researching the use of oocyte stem cells to treat female infertility and other diseases (read more about this below).

A bunch of backbiters

Another aspect that looks implausible in the story of the Vasilievs is the possibility of multiple conceptions of two, three and four children at the same time.

There are two types of multiple pregnancies: either several eggs that leave the ovaries as a result of ovulation are successfully fertilized by spermatozoa (so-called fraternal twins), or one fertilized egg is divided into two or more viable embryos, resulting in identical twins with an identical genetic code.

Image copyright SPL Image caption Modern fertilization technologies make it theoretically possible to have an infinite number of children

In general, such situations are extremely rare. So, in 2012 in Britain, the chance of giving birth to twins was only 1.5% of all pregnancies, triplets - an insignificant three ten thousandths of a percent, and four or more babies were born three times out of 778,805 times. This is evidenced by the statistics of the Multiple Births Foundation.

Yes, the tendency to give birth to twins is indeed hereditary, and in Fyodor Vasiliev's wife it could be expressed especially clearly.

However, in general, the likelihood that Vasilyeva was somehow able to conceive and survive the birth of at least 16 twins looks microscopic.

"There are 16 twins alone? I would be very surprised," Tilly comments.

Another wake-up call in the history of the Vasilievs: it is claimed that 67 of the 69 children born by them survived infancy.

In the 18th century, infant mortality was high even for children born as a result of a single pregnancy, and reached alarming levels in the event of the birth of twins and so on - these children are usually premature and less healthy.

Now surrogate mothers can carry fetuses from other parents, potentially further increasing the number of children in the family

"Even if you had quadruplets today, I'm not sure they would all survive," says James Segars.

Finally, it is impossible to believe in the existence of a woman ready for such a life. "Just imagine how stressful it is!" Valerie Baker says

Segars echoes her: "You can go crazy! I can't imagine what it was like to live in this house."

If, nevertheless, this story is a true story, and not a legend, then the endless need to take care of children could be the decisive reason for the Vasilyevs' divorce, which followed after several decades of marriage.

Already an elderly man, Fyodor Vasiliev remarried, and his new wife allegedly gave birth to "only" 18 children. This is to the question of topics for the yellow press.

Brave new world

So what is the real limit? The answer to this question is not so simple, since the "natural" restrictions that apply to the offspring of a single woman can now be circumvented.

Firstly, the development of assisted reproductive technologies (ART), which appeared in the late 1970s, led to a surge in the birth rate of twins, triplets, and so on (Nadya Suleman used ART).

Image copyright SPL Image caption According to one researcher, there may someday be a way to activate a woman's ability to produce many times more eggs.

Secondly, now surrogate mothers can carry fetuses from other parents, potentially further increasing the number of children in the family.

And here's what scientists have recently found out: we probably greatly underestimate women's reproductive capabilities.

According to research in recent years, inside the female ovaries are "oocyte stem cells" that, if properly stimulated, could lead to the creation of an almost infinite number of eggs.

Jonathan Tilly and his colleagues have collected information about these cells from a variety of creatures - from flies to monkeys.

In 2012, they got to the stem cells of human oocytes. As it turned out, they do not contribute to the production of eggs, unlike similar animal cells. For female flies, this is a common way to produce new eggs.

In principle, women could mother hundreds or even thousands of children.

Many doctors working in his field express doubts, but Jonathan Tilly is sure that there is a theoretical possibility to activate this mechanism in women.

He hopes to help women whose egg reserves are depleted, including prematurely - for example, due to cancer treatment.

If this hypothetical procedure really turns out to be possible, the imagination paints the following picture: fertility drugs are used to hyperstimulate the ovaries, with numerous follicles simultaneously maturing and ovulating.

This multitude of eggs can be surgically retrieved and fertilized in a test tube, then surgically placed in the wombs of any number of surrogate mothers whose job it is to deliver the fetuses. Each of them can potentially give birth to two or more twins.

Image copyright SPL Image caption Men are capable of becoming fathers to hundreds of children. What if science gives women the same opportunity?

Thus, from a reproductive point of view, women could approach men, becoming mothers for hundreds or even thousands of children - leaving the achievements of Fyodor Vasiliev's wife far behind.

However, Tilly makes it clear that his research in no way suggests that women will be able to have thousands of children. He intends to contribute to the elimination of infertility in those who have been diagnosed with such a diagnosis.

However, the researcher hopes that scientific advances will help equalize the reproductive opportunities of men and women.

After all, males produce millions of sperm throughout their lives, so the only natural limit to their offspring is the presence (or absence) of ovulating partners.

As soon as it comes to the idea that restrictions on female fertility may be lifted, everyone starts to go crazy Jonathan Tilly

Conqueror (and, some believe, serial rapist) Genghis Khan apparently fathered hundreds of children across his vast Asian empire some 800 years ago. According to genetics, about 16 million people living today are his descendants.

"Theoretically, men can become fathers before very old age, and if you start early, the situation can develop according to the model of Genghis Khan," says Jonathan Tilly.

According to him, "male fertility is really unlimited," but if we assume that his research will give the desired result, then "and female too."

If such a scenario does materialize, the existence of mothers with countless children will create a sensation, perhaps even more than the 69 children of the Vasilievs.

The question is: how would the public react to multiple fatherhood? If not so violent, is it fair?

“People take unrestricted male fertility for granted – everyone knows we can do that,” Tilly explains. “But as soon as it comes to the idea that restrictions on female fertility might be lifted, everyone starts to go crazy.”

The researcher believes that the issue must be considered in the future, and the equality for which women have deservedly fought for the past few decades should also apply to reproduction issues.

About this Tilly says this: "In fact, there should be no difference between the sexes."

The birth of one baby is a classic of the genre of nature regarding the Crown of Creation, man. However, "thanks" to our intervention in nature and the development of artificial insemination technology, multiple pregnancy is no longer a rarity.

Twins and triplets are no longer a feature. Women give birth to five, eight and even 11 children at once. We offer to look at these courageous mothers, who at one time created a large, large family for themselves.

Identical 14-year-old twins were born in a quartet: Megan, Sarah, Kendra and Callie Durst became famous at the age of 6, and now star in a reality show about their lives.
According to 2005 data, 15 identical quadruplets were born in the world, 10 of them are sisters, but there are much more non-identical quadruplets. According to statistics, one quadruple falls on 700 thousand pregnancies.

The most famous, first and only case of the birth of five identical twins is the Canadian Dionne family. The girls were born in 1934 and for many years were a landmark of the province of Ontario, and according to the twins themselves, their fate was not enviable.

In 2013, five were born in Salt Lake City - 3 girls and 2 boys. It is noteworthy that the pregnancy occurred naturally.

Last year, 2016, 37-year-old Oksana Kobeletskaya from Odessa gave birth to five, although the couple were expecting twins.

Nkem Chukwu from Texas in December 1998 gave birth to eight at once. Moreover, on December 8 she gave birth to a girl, and on the 20th - 5 more girls and two boys (one of the babies died shortly after giving birth).

33-year-old Nadi Suliman in 2009 gave birth to eight twins at once - two girls and six boys. All children are alive and well, and this is the only case of the birth of an eight, where everyone survived.

Nineties were born in 1971, 1972, 1976, 1977, 1979 and 1999, however, unfortunately, none of these 54 children survived

Ten children - until today, it was considered the largest number of children born from one pregnancy. In 1946, 8 girls and 2 boys were born in Brazil, there are also known cases of the birth of such a number of children in China in 1936 and in Spain in 1924. There is no information about whether the children survived.

42-year-old resident of the Indian city of Riley Maria Fernandez in 37 minutes, naturally, gave birth to 11 kids. All are perfectly healthy boys, six of which are identical twins. This phenomenon is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. Thus, today 11 children born from one pregnancy is an absolute record.