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.
The world's most fertile woman had 69 children: Who is Valentina Vassilyeva and what is her incredible story? Her genes are going to be in the population for many, many years.
The Guinness World Records for most children delivered at a single birth to survive is currently held by Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to six boys and two girls in California, US, in 2009. Last month, a 25-year-old Malian woman had given birth to nine babies, two more than doctors had detected during medical scans.
A 36-year-old woman from the US, who has given birth to 10 children in the past 10 years, says she has no plans of stopping until she has a family of 14. Courtney Rogers and her husband Chris Rogers got married in 2008 welcomed their first children in 2010.
Charlotte Story, from Bakersfield, California, gave birth to 22 children, including 4 sets of twins, between 1922 and 1946. 20 of them lived to adulthood and survived her, and 2 of them are still alive today.
The mother's body after childbirth
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.
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.
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.
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.
A woman gave birth to octuplets in California Monday after 30 weeks of pregnancy. The six boys and two girls ranged in weight from 1 pound, 8 ounces, to 3 pounds, 4 ounces. 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.
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.
Since men require less time and fewer resources to have kids, the most "prolific" fathers today can have up to about 200 children. The number of children men can have depends on the health of their sperm and other factors like how many women they can reproduce with.
The world's oldest father is believed to be Mr Ramajit Raghav, who was 94 years old when he fathered his first child in 2010. He and his then 52-year-old wife Shakuntala Devi had another son two years later.
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. Here are some other notable men who had their mojos working well into their golden years.
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.
Known as the Sperminator the inseminator, or perhaps even "America's Dad," Ari Nagel is the biological father to over 100 children across the world.
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.
Joanna Krzysztonek had to endure 75 days of labour, and stay lying down 24 hours a day in order to save her unborn babies. Joanna, 31, was pregnant with triplets when she went into labour at 21 weeks. Her first baby was born prematurely and tragically was too weak to survive.
Cheyenne, who has dark hair and blue-green eyes, isn't the smallest baby ever born. That honor rests with Kwek Yu Xuan, who was born at 7.5 ounces — the weight of an apple — in June 2020 in Singapore. Her mother also suffered from preeclampsia and gave birth by an emergency C-section, according to the BBC.
Some research studies have also shown that unwanted pregnancies have been associated with poor maternal and child outcomes. For example, children born of unwanted pregnancies are at risk of behavioral and psychological issues in adolescence.
Because a certain percentage of our eggs are abnormal at any age, and because fertilization has to happen within a narrow window after ovulation occurs, even a young, healthy woman trying to get pregnant has only about a 25% chance each month.
The concept of unintended pregnancy helps in understanding the fertility of populations and the unmet need for contraception, also known as birth control, and family planning. Most unintended pregnancies result from not using contraception or from not using it consistently or correctly.
Your father's brother is your uncle.
The youngest father in the world is reportedly a boy from China, who, at 9 fathered a child with an 8-year-old girl. This occurred in 1910. There is also a 10-year-old father recorded in the USA, no details about the mother.