9 babies at a time and other pregnancy and childbirth records

The largest number of children in one birth

The birth of nine children at once was a complete surprise even for their 25-year-old mother Halima Cisse. A resident of the West African country of Mali was sure that she was waiting for the birth of seven heirs, as it was seen on the ultrasound. However, on May 4, 2021, the girl gave birth to five girls and four boys. As the Ministry of Health of the Republic assured, all the kids feel good.

The biggest child in the world

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest baby in history was given birth to a Canadian Anna Bates in 1879. The child’s weight was 10,8 kg, but he did not live long, dying just 11 hours after birth.

The smallest child in the world

The smallest baby who was born and survived at the same time is called Rumayza Shayk. The girl was born in December 2018 in the American San Diego and weighed 245 at birth. Her mother suffered during pregnancy with a serious form of preeclampsia, which was expressed in large surges in blood pressure. Doctors assured that she had literally a few hours of her life left, so the artificially provoked childbirth turned out to be premature, only at the 26th week. However, the doctors worked a miracle, and after three months the mother and daughter were discharged from the hospital. Thanks to modern medicine, such miracles are becoming more and more – the previous record belonged to a baby from Germany, born in 2015, weighing 252 g, and in the summer of 2018 in Japan, the smallest boy in the world was born – he weighed only 268 g.

The youngest mom in the world

Such a record can hardly be proud, it is rather terrible: in May 1939, a five-year-old girl from Peru, Lina Medina, gave birth to a boy. Her father brought her to the hospital with complaints of an unnaturally swollen belly. When it turned out that the girl was in her seventh month of pregnancy, her father was soon arrested, accused of raping her daughter. With a caesarean section, the baby was born alive. Doctors later found out that Lina’s periods began abnormally early – from the age of three.

The oldest mom in the world

More recently, at the beginning of September, a woman who is just right to be a grandmother became a mother. 74-year-old Erramatti Mangayamma from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh gave birth to twins. It was not without modern medicine – donor eggs were used for the IVF procedure. By the way, most of the expenses were covered by the reproductive medicine clinic, where the woman applied. The management of the institution wisely assumed that the pregnancy and childbirth of an elderly lady would be a historic event. And so it happened – that on September 5, a 74-year-old woman gave birth to two healthy girls by caesarean section, media reported around the world. Now Mangayamma is the oldest woman on the planet who managed to give birth.

Curious fact

For the first time in history, pain relievers were used during childbirth in 1847. Scottish doctor James Young Simpson used chloroform. The girl who was born was named Anesthesia.

The most large mother

This record, which was set by a Russian woman (though not our contemporary), was not destined to get into the book of records for the reason that there were no such books in the 69th century. However, records were kept in church books. According to them, the wife of a certain Fyodor Vasilyev from the village of Shuya gave birth to 27 children, while being pregnant 16 times: 40 times she gave birth to twins, seven times to triplets, and in four cases she gave birth to four children. For all these pregnancies and childbirth, the peasant took 1725 years – from 1765 to XNUMX.

Another fertile pregnancy

In January 2009, in Bellflower, California, Nadia Suleman gave birth to as many as eight children at once, conceiving them with the help of IVF and a sperm donor. And this was only the sixth birth of eight children in American history, but the first in which all children survived infancy. The birth was attended by as many as 46 staff of the clinic, and it was expected that there will be seven children; the birth of the eighth came as a surprise to doctors. A caesarean section was performed, and the process itself took a little over five minutes.

The very first man to give birth

Here, of course, it’s worth clarifying right away: this man was born a girl. Her name was Tracy Lagondino, but she was uncomfortable in a woman’s body, so she underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2002 and became Thomas Beaty. At the same time, having legally formed himself as a man, Thomas cheated: he left himself female genitals in order to be able to give birth to a child in the future. He took advantage of this opportunity three times – he carried all the children and gave birth on his own, however, with the help of artificial insemination technology. Now 42-year-old Thomas is married for the second time. His 46-year-old wife, Amber Nichols, is the principal of the school where his children study.

Largest number of twins

Identical quadruplets – Preana, Adreana, Natalie and Melody – were born in March 2002 in California from a couple of Ornie Hamsa and Verek Mui. The girls turned out to be genetically identical, all embryos formed from one egg, which was fertilized by one sperm. Of course, quadruplets are not born so rarely – only in the United States there are about 500 of them every year, and not only quadruplets, but also a larger number of children at the same time. But the case of the appearance of exactly identical, so-called monozygous, quadruplets is incredibly rare – according to statistics, this happens once in 11 million such genera.

Longest freezing of embryos

In May 2003, twins were born in Jerusalem, whose embryos were frozen 12 years ago, and this turned out to be the longest cryofreeze in history, after which children were born. The boy and girl weighed 2,3 kg at birth.

The longest and fastest childbirth in history

Joanna Krshyshtonek, a resident of Wroclaw, Poland, was expecting triplets. Labor began prematurely, at the 22nd week of pregnancy. The first baby born was too weak to survive. To prevent the other two babies from repeating his fate, the doctors decided to delay their birth: Joanna was given medicine to stop contractions, then put to bed at an angle of 30 degrees so that her legs were above head level, while squeezing the umbilical cord and placing it in the uterus. In this position, the woman was constantly for 2 and a half months, after which a healthy boy and girl were born, and the childbirth that lasted 75 days turned out to be the longest in history.

But the British Palak Weiss managed the delivery faster than anyone else. It took her only 2 minutes. The waters receded, and after just one push, a healthy girl literally jumped out of the woman, who was named Vedika. By the way, Palak is no stranger to giving birth quickly: her first-born son was born in just an hour.