Duggars by the Dozen 35: Five Months with no Pregnant Duggars. How much longer will it last?

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

DH's grandmother was 17 when her 1st child was born, she went on to have 5 live births, she was pregnant at total of 9 times but had 2 late miscarriages and 1 stillbirth. Her last 2 =babies were both "surprise" babies the 2nd youngest was born when she was 40 & the youngest was born when she was 46.  My MIL was the 3rd child born, my husband was her 3rd child and he is 2 years younger than her youngest sister. His grandparents had 7 grandkids before they had their last child.

My MIL had her 1st child at 16, her 2nd at 17. and her last (#6) at 32.  The 2nd child had his 1st child at 18. So she was a grandmother at 35, a great grandmother at 51 and a great great grandmother at 71. My MIL had 6 kids her youngest child, and only daughter died a year and a 1/2 ago and had her youngest grandchild who will be 18 in Feb. 2 of her kids didn't have kids her oldest granddaughter is 40 and a grandmother herself (she's 8 years YOUNGER than I am) her youngest grandson is 17. 

[Plum78]

I’ve had my gallbladder removed today and this thread drift is helping to take my mind off of the pain! Thank you FJ!

[Melissa1977]

In 1917, my great grandmother and her eldest daugther got pregnant at the same time. They were also neighbours and both nursed both babies. I think she was 40 something and her daughter 20 years old. The baby (my grandpa) was the youngest.

My grandpa said that in those old times, a woman in her forties was considered too old to be pregnant. As they married young, when they reached 40 years old, their children were already teens or adults, and having a new baby wasn't exactly a blessing. 

I'm not sure how common was to have kids at middle/late forties, but according to my grandpa, he was an exception (parents were usually younger). I wonder if some birth control (AKA abstinence) played a role once several healthy kids were safely born and raised.

[MoonFace]

Here is a list of people who had the most children:  (Moochele didn't make the list)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_children

 

[AussieKrissy]

3 hours ago, JermajestyDuggar said:

Oh and Bobby Darin was raised by his grandmother believing she was his mother. His mother was an unmarried teen mom and he thought she was his sister until he was an adult. 

So was Jack Nicholson

[Sky with diamonds]

1 hour ago, Plum78 said:

I’ve had my gallbladder removed today and this thread drift is helping to take my mind off of the pain! Thank you FJ!

I wish a good recovery for you. ?

[mollysmom]

Dayum! I was always happy that I had a hysterectomy 3 years ago but after reading this thread I'm even more happy!!! I can't even imagine having a baby at 41 years old!! Wow!

[Iamtheway]

19 hours ago, Knight of Ni said:

Wait... hold on just one minute. Are you telling me that someone 8 years older than me is a grandma?!?! 

I am the same age as Kendra’s mom but look older then her. I have a 4 year old. It’s really weird to think that I could be Kendras mom and a grandma right now. I don’t feel almost 40 and am still surprised when people born in the 1990’s are adults.

That photo of Jer does look like he and the girl in the middle brought two cheperones each on their date. But if that was the case I don’t think they would let anyone share the photo before it was announced so probably just friends. 

[Snarkasarus Rex]

45 minutes ago, Iamtheway said:

That photo of Jer does look like he and the girl in the middle brought two cheperones each on their date. But if that was the case I don’t think they would let anyone share the photo before it was announced so probably just friends. 

Jer is a student pilot now so I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a ‘special someone’.  The pilots in the family (JD, Austin, Siah) are now all married.

[Elvis Presby]

2 hours ago, Plum78 said:

I’ve had my gallbladder removed today and this thread drift is helping to take my mind off of the pain! Thank you FJ!

I hope you feel better now that it is out. (once you have recovered)  A heating pad on the abdomen helps a good bit.

[Leftitinmysnood]

My grandmother had her last baby at age 46 back in the 1960s. The family story is that my dad told his junior high teacher that his mom was pregnant and the principal called her to let her know my dad was telling lies at school. The principal was quite surprised to hear it was true.

[Markie]

Here’s my Maternal Grandmother’s stats: 

married 1928, D 1929, S 1930, S 1932, S 1933, D 1934, S 1936, S 1938, D 1943.

First child born when she was 27 and last when she was 41. The shortest gap was eleven months and the longest was 5 years. 

[HurricaneBells]

1 hour ago, Iamtheway said:

I am the same age as Kendra’s mom but look older then her. I have a 4 year old. It’s really weird to think that I could be Kendras mom and a grandma right now. I don’t feel almost 40 and am still surprised when people born in the 1990’s are adults.

Me too! Same age with a 4 year old. A good number of my friends kids are adults too and it amuses me greatly to tease them about being grandparents "any day now". Im joking, I hope their kids go far in life and see/do/experience what they want before babies. My friends though, no doubt dont spend too much time envying this season of life for me either lol

[Baba O'Riley]

2 hours ago, MoonFace said:

Here is a list of people who had the most children:  (Moochele didn't make the list)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_children

 

I didn't see my great grandma on that list.  My dad said she had 21 children, but I'm thinking some of them were failed pregnancies.  

As we are on the subject, I come from a big Irish Catholic family.  My mom was one of 10, my dad one of 15. I was one of five, including a half-sister I didn't know about until late in life. (She found us a few years ago.  It's been a very happy reunion.)

[SapphireSlytherin]

11 minutes ago, HurricaneBells said:

Im joking, I hope their kids go far in life and see/do/experience what they want before babies.

I hope their kids have babies NOW and get them raised and out of the house so they'll still be young enough to go places and do things.

[singsingsing]

5 minutes ago, Baba O'Riley said:

I didn't see my great grandma on that list.  My dad said she had 21 children, but I'm thinking some of them were failed pregnancies.  

As we are on the subject, I come from a big Irish Catholic family.  My mom was one of 10, my dad one of 15. I was one of five, including a half-sister I didn't know about until late in life. (She found us a few years ago.  It's been a very happy reunion.)

I know someone whose grandmother or great-grandmother (can't remember which) had 24 children! I'm not sure if all of them survived infancy, though. They were also Irish Catholic. My background is French Catholic, which also had the huge families. Some got to over 20, but usually it was more in the 12-16 range.

[Baba O'Riley]

13 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

I know someone whose grandmother or great-grandmother (can't remember which) had 24 children! I'm not sure if all of them survived infancy, though. They were also Irish Catholic. My background is French Catholic, which also had the huge families. Some got to over 20, but usually it was more in the 12-16 range.

The Quebecois of Canada also had some huge families.  Celine Dion was the youngest of 14 children.  The famous Dionne identical quintuplets also hailed from Quebec. (They had a terrible childhood. They were taken away from their parents and treated like a circus sideshow.)

[Rachel333]

36 minutes ago, Baba O'Riley said:

I didn't see my great grandma on that list.  My dad said she had 21 children, but I'm thinking some of them were failed pregnancies.  

As we are on the subject, I come from a big Irish Catholic family.  My mom was one of 10, my dad one of 15. I was one of five, including a half-sister I didn't know about until late in life. (She found us a few years ago.  It's been a very happy reunion.)

The list isn't exhaustive by any means. I'm sure there are quite a few large families who aren't on the list.

A crazy one to me is the Radford family. She has given birth 21 times! The oldest child is older than I am and the youngest was born just a few weeks ago.

[melon]

3 hours ago, Melissa1977 said:

In 1917, my great grandmother and her eldest daugther got pregnant at the same time. They were also neighbours and both nursed both babies. I think she was 40 something and her daughter 20 years old. The baby (my grandpa) was the youngest.

My grandpa said that in those old times, a woman in her forties was considered too old to be pregnant. As they married young, when they reached 40 years old, their children were already teens or adults, and having a new baby wasn't exactly a blessing. 

I'm not sure how common was to have kids at middle/late forties, but according to my grandpa, he was an exception (parents were usually younger). I wonder if some birth control (AKA abstinence) played a role once several healthy kids were safely born and raised.

My grandmother told me of her grandmother and her grandmother's sister.They both had a surprize baby at 42.

My great great grandmother had her last baby,at 42,her oldest daughter had a baby six weeks earlier,she died at 22 ,of complications.This was 1895.So my great great grandmother weaned her baby,and took her grandson home,bottle-fed them both.People did not expect him to live,but he did.He called his grandmother "Big Mama" his aunt was "Little Auntie".

My cousin also had a baby at 42,but that was in 2005.Her sister,my other cousin,had her last baby about 3 months before she turned 40,she did not want anymore children after that,she said she was too old.

And the two sisters who both had babies at 42.The other one told her sister she had disgraced the family...then the same thing happened to her!

[singsingsing]

1 hour ago, Baba O'Riley said:

The Quebecois of Canada also had some huge families.  Celine Dion was the youngest of 14 children.  The famous Dionne identical quintuplets also hailed from Quebec. (They had a terrible childhood. They were taken away from their parents and treated like a circus sideshow.)

That's my background! I mean... French Canadian and Quebecois. Not Celine Dion or the Dionne quintuplets.  

Actually, I think the Dionne quintuplets were Franco-Ontarians. But yeah, what happened to them was absolutely horrible and is a national shame. I think two of them are still alive, but they're understandably very private.

[luv2laugh]

People have babies after 35 all the time. They’re just more prepared to put money towards achieving their family through fertility treatments and are ok with a small family. God forbid if they can’t have a biological child, they’re fine with adopting.

If I need to focus on my career for awhile, I don’t see a huge deal in freezing my eggs. If I will become a parent whether it’s biological or through adoption but I want it to happen on my terms and fuck the Lori Alexanders who think differently and want to meddle in my business.

[Vivi_music]

49 minutes ago, singsingsing said:

That's my background! I mean... French Canadian and Quebecois. Not Celine Dion or the Dionne quintuplets.  

Actually, I think the Dionne quintuplets were Franco-Ontarians. But yeah, what happened to them was absolutely horrible and is a national shame. I think two of them are still alive, but they're understandably very private.

Québécois here too. Bonjour!

Doing tons of genealogical and historical research, I can attest French Canadians were very fruitfull. Even in my own family: my grandma is the youngest of 18 children. Not Quiverfull, simply very Catholic French Canadians in the early 20th century. I'm joking about not being Quiverfull, but the ideology had a similar core idea. ''La survivance'' was a very important mentality in 19th and early 20th century French Canada (I can't call it Québec yet, the Québécois identity emerged during the Quiet Revolution). In the mid 19th century, when British immigration started to become more important in Canada, it was imperative to ensure the survival of the French Canadian identity in the Americas. That was a very important mentality by conservative writers and columnists. That mentality was further pushed by the clergy. The Catholic clergy succeeded in making French Canadians believe the Catholic Church (falsely or not) would preserve them form British assimilation. The Catholic clergy encouraged women to have as many children as they could. They called it La Revanche du berceau ("the revenge of the cradle"). It suggested that although Anglo-Canadians dominated Canada in the 19th century (economically, politically), the higher birth rate promised that French-Canadians would resist. The implication was that it would not be possible to discriminate against francophones if they were to remain important in number. I can definitely see some similarities with the Quiverfull ideology but set in a different context. It was partly identity-driven but also religious for sure.

My grandmother was born in 1923, which is about the end of that period. If we take Celine Dion's family, it is a bit more unusual as family sizes got smaller as Québec moved further into the 20th century. Celine Dion was born in 1968, so almost at the end of the babyboom. The babyboom had en effect on natality rates for sure but it was usually families of 6 or 8 kids, not in the 10 digits. So I'd say Maman Dion was simply very fertile. Or into a big family.

Sorry for the historical thread drift!   My historian slip is showing.

[QuiverFullofBooks]

19 minutes ago, luv2laugh said:

People have babies after 35 all the time. They’re just more prepared to put money towards achieving their family through fertility treatments and are ok with a small family. God forbid if they can’t have a biological child, they’re fine with adopting.

If I need to focus on my career for awhile, I don’t see a huge deal in freezing my eggs. If I will become a parent whether it’s biological or through adoption but I want it to happen on my terms and fuck the Lori Alexanders who think differently and want to meddle in my business.

I thought that too. So did my friend. Still no kids. Fertility treatments and adoption are expensive. Health, career, finances, and relationships create issues.  Good luck.

[nausicaa]

5 hours ago, AussieKrissy said:

So was Jack Nicholson

And he found out when a reporter called him and asked him how he felt about the situation (after the reporter pulled his birth certificate up at the records office). Nicholson's response? "Wait---what!?" 

The story is the reporter began to apologize profusely and then hung up. ?

[louisa05]

A friend of mine has seven. Oldest born when she was 33; youngest when she was 43. She had fertility treatment to conceive the first two (twins) but pregnancy cleared up the issue (endo) and the rest of her pregnancies were naturally conceived. 

My husband's maternal grandmother had 11 children. She was 19 when the oldest was born and 46 when the youngest (my father-in-law) was. She was born in 1904. No fertility treatments there. 

Most of my close college friends have had all of their kids after 35 and a few had kids in their early 40s. Only two used fertility treatments of any kind. It is not impossible to have children after 35. Telling women that constantly actually has had an impact on the number of unintentional pregnancies after those ages. The UK had a campaign eight years ago to remind women over 35 to still be vigilant with contraception after documenting a high abortion rate due to unintended pregnancies for women 40-44 years old. A woman in my family had an unplanned pregnancy at 34 and told me that she had heard so many times that it is "super hard" to get pregnant after 30 that she "didn't really pay attention" to birth control anymore.