by A Woman Russia Gave Birth To 69 Children In 76 Years, Is That True
Today the proportion of the population is decreasing as many couples choose to have fewer children, and many couples fear about motherhood. Leads to the birth of many children becoming smaller.
However, history tells of a woman who gave birth to a whopping 69 children back in the 18th century. According to some sources, her name was Valentina Vassilyeva, and she holds the Guinness World Record for the most children ever.
Valentina Vassilyeva was the first wife of a peasant named Feodor Vassilyev from Shuya, Russia. The family lived in the 1700s, between 1707-1782. Valentina is believed to have ᴅɪᴇᴅ at the age of 76, having left behind offspring comprising of 69 children, only 2 of whom ᴅɪᴇᴅ as babies. According to the Guinness World Records, who claimed her to be “the most prolific mother ever,” the woman went through 27 labors: 16 of them resulted in twins, 7 in triplets, and 4 in quadruplets.
Obviously, she wasn’t giving birth for the entire period of her life. When calculating her “fertile” years, we figured out that they would be from approximately 1725-1765. This leaves us with 40 years for 27 labors. This may seem enough at first ɢʟᴀɴᴄᴇ, impossible at second ɢʟᴀɴᴄᴇ, and dubious for the third ɢʟᴀɴᴄᴇ, so let’s make some calculations.
You might know that an average pregnancy takes 40 weeks. However, the more children you have in the ᴡᴏᴍʙ, the more likely it is that your labor will come earlier. According to the BBC calculations, Mrs. Vassilyeva could’ve had 37-week pregnancies with twins, 32-week pregnancies with triplets, and 30-week pregnancies with quadruplets. If we add all this up, we get 936 weeks. A year consists of 52 weeks, so if we divide the resulting numbers, we get 18 years. So, Mrs. Vassilyeva had to spend 18 entire years of her life with a belly ʙᴜᴍᴘ. While theoretically, Mrs. Vassilyeva had enough time to carry all the babies, there are a couple more facts to consider.
First of all, there’s such a thing as multiple ovulation, when a woman’s body releases sᴇᴠᴇʀᴀʟ ᴇɢɢs ᴘᴇʀ ᴄʏᴄʟᴇ. Though this is not the most common thing in the world (approximately 5-10% of all of your cycles), there’s still a chance Valentina was just a ᴘʜᴇɴᴏᴍᴇɴᴏɴ
Second pregnancy and labor is a challenging thing for a woman’s body. When pregnancies go one by one less than 18 months apart, the ʀɪsᴋ of complications increases both for the mom and for the baby. A woman’s body just doesn’t have enough time to recover from all the changes caused by the previous pregnancy and restore all the nutrients it lost. Now, if 2 back-to-back pregnancies are already ʀɪsᴋy, imagine having 27 of them, without having time to rest.
Third, experts doubt this many children (as well as their mother) would survive even with today’s medicine, let alone in the 18th-century Russian countryside. At that time, every pregnancy was a ʀɪsᴋ. Add the fact that they were peasants and had to work and take care of the children at the same time. Oh, and don’t forget about food and clothes for the whole crowd. Parents here can very well imagine what we’re talking about. So can you believe this a truth story.
