How many babies can fit inside a pregnant woman? There's no scientific limit, but the largest reported number of fetuses in one womb was 15.
One study estimated a woman can have around 15 pregnancies in a lifetime. And depending on how many babies she births for each pregnancy, she'd probably have around 15-30 children.
A Russian woman named Valentina Vassilyeva and her husband Feodor Vassilyev are alleged to hold the record for the most children a couple has produced. She gave birth to a total of 69 children – sixteen pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets – between 1725 and 1765, a total of 27 births.
If the 12 – called duodecaplets – are all born alive they would represent a medical miracle and break the record of American mother Nadya Suleman, who recently gave birth to the world's longest-surviving octuplets.
Multiple births of as many as eight babies have been born alive, the first surviving set on record goes to the Suleman octuplets, born in 2009 in Bellflower, California.
The title of mother with the most children ever goes to a Russian peasant woman named Feodor Vassilyev, who lived in the 1700s. She gave birth to a total of 69 children sixteen pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets.
The twins Timothy and Lydia Ridgeway were born 30 years after they were frozen as embryos in 1992. They hold the record for developing from the longest-frozen embryos known to result in a live birth. The adopted embryos were frozen in 1992, and the twins were born exactly three decades later.
Infants (0-1 year of age)
Rabbi Shimon Gruzman, (far left, holding baby) and Chanie Gruzman (far right holding baby) along with their four sets of twins. Miriam and Yocheved Gruzman came into the world last month, not knowing that they were potentially setting a national record as the fourth set of twins in their family.
Erramatti Mangamma currently holds the record for being the oldest living mother who gave birth at the age of 73 through in-vitro fertilisation via caesarean section in the city of Hyderabad, India. She delivered twin baby girls, making her also the oldest mother to give birth to twins.
While a 92-year-old woman delivering a 60-year-old baby may sound like a bizarre plot twist from the movie “Benjamin Button,” it's true. Huang Yijun, 92, of southern China, recently delivered a child which she'd been carrying for well over half a century. The baby wasn't alive, however.
The world's most fertile woman has had an incredible 44 children - and now has to raise her massive brood on her own. Mariam Nabatanzi had her record number of babies by the time she was just 36 and all with the same father.
Well, a new study out of Australia's Edith Cowan University is turning all these conventions on their heads with the conclusion that parents with four or more kids are the happiest.
The man who is thought to have fathered the most children of all time is Moroccan Sultan Ismail Ibn Sharif (1645 to 1727) with a total of more than 1,000, according to Guinness World Records.
“So, every patient is different and every case is unique. However, from the current medical evidence, most medical authorities do state that if multiple C-sections are planned, the expert recommendation is to adhere to the maximum number of three.”
However, few genes appear to be definitively linked to hyperovulation, so it could just be that genetics in general on the mother's side contribute to the probability of having fraternal twins. Heredity on the father's side, on the other hand, does not increase a couple's odds of having twins.
Monoamniotic-monochorionic Twins
These types of twins share a chorion, placenta, and an amniotic sac. This is the rarest type of twin, and it means a riskier pregnancy as the babies can get tangled in their own umbilical cords.
Identical, or monozygotic (MZ), twins have 100 percent of their genes—including those that influence risk for alcoholism—in common, whereas fraternal, or dizygotic (DZ), twins share (on average) only 50 percent of the genes that vary in the population (see figure). Common Environmental Sources.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines child as, "A human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier." This is ratified by 192 of 194 member countries.
Preschoolers (3-5 years) Middle Childhood (6-8 years) Middle Childhood (9-11 years) Young Teens (12-14 years)
A baby under 28 days or up to 3 months of age is often called a newborn; however, there is no single or set definition. The term baby or infant may be used from birth up to around 1 year of age. Once your baby turns 1 year old, they are often referred to as a toddler.
The small West African nation of Benin has a higher concentration of twins than any other country in the developing world.
Multiples are generally born only a few minutes apart. If delivered by cesarian section, the interval between births is usually only a minute, maybe two. The interval is generally longer for vaginal deliveries, ranging from a few minutes to more than an hour.
The median twin-to-twin time interval was 19 min (range 2–399) with 217 (41.2%) of the second twins being born within 15 min, 143 (27.1%) second twins were born within 16–30 min, 70 (13.3%) within 31–45 min, 37 (7%) within 46–60 min and 60 (11.4%) after 60 min.