Valentina Vassilyeva, a Russian woman, holds the record for having given birth to the most children in her lifetime. While reports about families with anywhere from 15 to 30 children are common these days, Vassilyeva’s record still stands. She is the woman who has the most children, according to several contemporary sources that imply this statistically impossible and improbable story is real. The Guinness Book of World Records states that, as of right now, there has never been a record higher than 69 children born to a single mother.
Valentina is said to have given birth to all 69 of the children that she and her husband, Feodor Vassilyev are said to have raised. Mrs. Vassilyeva is credited with accomplishing this amazing feat, which she accomplished between 1725 and 1765. During that time, she gave birth to sixteen pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets. She was born in Shuya in 1707, which is roughly 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow. According to Vassilyev, her husband additionally had 18 children—six pairs of twins and two sets of triplets—with his second wife, for an apparent total of 87 offspring.
Except for two, the women’s pregnancies were probably 37 weeks for the twins, 32 weeks for the triplets, and 30 weeks for the quadruplets. When you add it all up, Mrs. Vassilyev would have been pregnant for 18 of the 40 years, or half of her life, which is equivalent to two decades of pickle and ice cream cravings. This is incredibly unusual for the period in which these pregnancies occurred and the fact that, as a peasant, she had limited access to the best medical care available.
Given that the story is set hundreds of years ago in rural Russia, the weight of labor substantially casts doubt on Vassilyev’s claim to have had 69 children. Even though the Guinness Book of World Records has chosen to accept it, many people—especially those in the medical field—think that the story is only a fable and cannot comprehend how this could have happened in Russia in the 1700s.
It is possible that Mrs. Vassilyev had a genetic predisposition to hyper-ovulate or release multiple eggs in a cycle, which greatly increases the likelihood of having twins or multiple children, even though this historical record for the most children by one woman should be regarded with caution.
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