Meet Mrs Vassilyeva, wife of Feodor Vassilyev and mother of 69 children.
Yes, you read correctly – the woman who holds the Guinness World Record for most prolific mother EVER, is a Russian woman from Shuya who, in a span of 40 years, had 27 births and 69 children. To elaborate exactly how this is possible, Mr Vassilyev wrote in a letter, at 75 years in 1782, that his first wife gave birth to 4 sets of quadruplets, 7 sets of triplets and 16 sets of twins.
Mr Vassilyev married again and continued to procreate but his second wife, unfortunately, only managed to have 2 sets of triplets and 6 sets of twins giving birth to 18 children.
With a total of 87 children, of which 84 actually survived childbirth and grew up to see their father grow old, Mr Vassilyev lived a fruitful, full life, to say the least.
Not much else is known about Mrs Vassilyeva though, except that she is believed to have lived until her mid-70s.
And she may just have had the genetic predisposition to hyper-ovulate.
Read more:
- Quadruplets in hysterics
- Multiple births: you need support
- "Octomom" and her kids: How the Octuplets look now
Do you know of any interesting world records we can share with the Parent24 readers?Let us know by emailing to chatback@parent24.com and we may just publish them.
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