Girls generally start menstruating at the age of 13 and this continues till she becomes 51, which gives her 38 possible years of reproductive action. However, counting that every delivery requires 9 months, a limit of about 40 pregnancies actually seems probable.
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.
Despite the growing trends mentioned above, two children still seems to the ideal number. An actual study revealed one to two children is the ideal number for “happiness”, but with two you don't have to deal with the aforementioned only child issues.
Most prolific mother ever
The record for number of children born to one mother is 69 in the 1700s, according to Guinness. She was the wife to Feodor Vassilyev, a peasant from Shuya, Russia. She gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets.
According to a local monastery's report to the government in Moscow, between 1725 and 1765 Mrs Vassilyev popped out 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets, over 27 separate labours. The grand total: 69 children.
Women pregnant with multiple babies are more than twice as likely to develop high blood pressure of pregnancy. This health problem often starts earlier and is worse than in pregnancy with one baby. It can also raise the chance of early detachment of the placenta (placental abruption).
The longest interval between the birth of twins is 90 days, in the case of Molly and Benjamin West, dizygotic (fraternal) twins born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA to parents Lesa and David West (all USA) on 1 January and 30 March 1996.
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. Now 39, Mariam has had three sets of quadruplets, four sets of triplets and six sets of twins.
Maria del Carmen Bousada de Lara is the oldest verified mother; she was aged 66 years 358 days when she gave birth to twins; she was 130 days older than Adriana Iliescu, who gave birth in 2005 to a baby girl. In both cases, the children were conceived through IVF with donor eggs.
The oldest mother that was reported by Guinness World Records to deliver a child after conceiving naturally was 59. In 2019, a 74-year-old woman from southern India had twin girls via IVF and is reportedly the oldest woman ever to give birth, according to USA Today.
They found that one or two children made no difference to happiness, for men or women. However, this study found that three or more children negatively affected well-being. But there is more to life than just happiness. Often, the moments we truly savor are stressful.
Logically it may be assumed that the more children a mother has, the more stressed out she will be, but a new study has revealed that this is not the case. In fact, mothers who have three children are the most stressed out - even more so than those who have four, according to a Today.com survey of 7,164 U.S. mothers.
Grow your family to at least four children! According to a study out of Australia's Edith Cowan University, parents with the most life satisfaction (which means those who are the happiest) are those that have four or more children.
So a safe limit on the number of children is at three and traversing beyond this mark can mean serious complications for the mother and the family.
According to real birth data compiled from 20 years of American births, mid-September is the most birthday-packed time of the year, with September 9th being the most popular day to be born in America, followed closely by September 19th.
Surprisingly, Mel Gibson has 9 children, Mia Farrow had a whopping 14. DMX has had addiction issues, but has managed to have 15 kids along the way. And of course, Bob Marley spread his love all over the world, mainly in Jamaica, as he had 11 kids.
According to Guinness World Records, the oldest father who had the documentation to prove it was Australian Les Colley, who in 1991 fathered a son with his third wife when he was 92.
A woman's peak reproductive years are between the late teens and late 20s. By age 30, fertility (the ability to get pregnant) starts to decline. This decline happens faster once you reach your mid-30s. By 45, fertility has declined so much that getting pregnant naturally is unlikely.
Erramatti Mangamma (born 1 September 1946) is currently the oldest living woman to give birth. She achieved this feat on 5 September 2019, giving birth to twin girls at the age of 73.
The man, Ziona Chana, is the head of a local Christian sect that allows polygamy. The sect, named "Chana", was founded by Ziona's father in 1942 and it now has a membership of around 400 families. Ziona, posing here at the site of a church he is building, married his first wife when he was 17.
Around 17.5% of the adult population – roughly 1 in 6 worldwide – experience infertility, showing the urgent need to increase access to affordable, high-quality fertility care for those in need. The new estimates show limited variation in the prevalence of infertility between regions.
Can twins have different fathers? In rare cases, fraternal twins can be born from two different fathers in a phenomenon called heteropaternal superfecundation. Although uncommon, rare cases have been documented where a woman is pregnant by two different men at the same time.
A mother has given birth to premature twins — in separate months. Hayley Burgess, 34, gave birth to Charlie and Layla nine weeks early, delivering Charlie at 11.30pm on September 30 and twin sister Layla at 10 minutes past midnight on October 1.
Twins were born in Massachusetts only eight minutes apart, but they were born in proximity to the turn of the millennium in 2000. One boy arrived on New Year's Eve, 1999, just a few minutes shy of midnight.