So the world record for kids is 69...How does that work?

[tabitha2]

The world record for having the most number of children officially recorded is 69 by the first of two wives of Feodor Vassilyev (1707-1782), a peasant from Shuya, 150 miles east of Moscow. In 27 confinements, she gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets. The children were born between 1725-1765.

 

...And all of them lived save 2.

 

How would she have managed this in a time and place when most families had children and babies die young because of disease,hunger,accidents and so many women died in childbirth...and she lived to an old age.Do you think she felt blessed or cursed? His second wife also had all multiples.

[Sunnichick31]

I bet JChelle is jealous!

[Beeks]

Holy cow....it's amazing that she AND the babies survived all those multiple pregnancies/births. I wonder what was going on with her physically that made her give birth to so many multiples....over-active ovaries? Is that a real condition?

[Boogalou]

Clearly, Goddidit.

It is amazing but I'm not sure if I necessarily believe it. Record keeping was not the greatest back then. Also, look at the dates. 40 years of having children is a lot of years. I wonder if there was some creative bookkeeping going on.

[tabitha2]

It may have had something to do with him as his second wife never had a single birth either-Is there a condition that makes a man prone to produce high order multiples?

BTW,while their is of course some doubt various early sources verify the details.

About the 40 years,if she started young and she probably did as she could have easily married in her early teens it is entirely plausible.

[Beeks]

It may have had something to do with him as his second wife never had a single birth either-Is there a condition that makes a man prone to produce high order multiples?

BTW,while their is of course some doubt various early sources verify the details.

About the 40 years,if she started young and she probably did as she could have easily married in her early teens it is entirely plausible.

I can't imagine the man has anything to do with multiples. If only one egg is released, the guy's sperm have nothing to do with it - unless there's something in the sperm that could cause the eggs to split and create identicals? That would be pretty fascinating.

[BravaAmica]

You'd think after 50 kids the husband would stop getting her pregnant.

[tabitha2]

Second wifey had a measly 18 kids-6 twins,2 triplets. Slacker.

[Maul the Koala]

They must've had a really prosperous farm though. 67 kids to work the fields? Unless they were all serfs. Then their owners must've thought they hit the jackpot.

[Witsec5]

An old bf was an identical twin. His sisters were too. The twinning gene came from the father who was also an identical twin. So it can come from the dad's side.

That said, I find it hard to believe that the man had 67 kids by two wives and all survived except for two. Sounds fishy!

[Rachel333]

An old bf was an identical twin. His sisters were too. The twinning gene came from the father who was also an identical twin. So it can come from the dad's side.

That's just a huge coincidence, as identical twins are not genetic, they're completely random. The twinning gene can come from the father's side, but only fraternal twins and it would only affect his daughters, making it more likely that they would have twins. The gene makes women more likely to release multiple eggs, so if a man carries it he can pass it on to his daughters, but there is no affect on the mother of his children.

I've always been interested in that women. I wish we knew her name. Mrs. Vassilyeva, I guess. I think it's possible if she was very healthy and released multiple eggs each time--it was "only" 27 pregnancies--and I know the story is generally accepted as true. It does seem very improbable that his second wife was also very prolific with many multiple births, though.

[tabitha2]

http://books.google.com/books?id=xix2VL ... yev&f=true

I think it is pretty warped that the man got all the attention-He was the one being being presented to the Empress while we don't even know the wifes name!

[turquoise]

I'm a cynic. I'm willing to believe the woman had a lot of children, including multiple births. But this sounds like an exaggeration to me. Considering how many women died in childbirth in earlier times, what are the odds of a woman in the 1700s having that many pregnancies, all multiples, without medical problems? Given the infant mortality at the time, how likely is it that anyone could have had 60+ children and had only two of them die before adulthood? And how would any family take care of that many children, even with servants?

I'm thinking Feodor Vassilyev came up with a good story to get money and attention.

[crazyforkate]

The part I can't believe isn't the births, but the two kids dying. You could get that from a family of 69 today.

[FJSharkJump]

Perhaps the second wife was a sister to the first and they both had the same propensity to release multiple eggs.

Not that I really buy this story.

[tabitha2]

I wanna say all lived means they survived birth and infancy. I don't believe they all made it to adulthood,though, and since we he had second wife it logically means she must have eventually died from the births-Not that I know much about divorce in 1700's rural Russia but that doesn't seem probable.

[fundiefan]

I don't buy it, at least not the specifics.

Anything is possible, I suppose, but quad births in the 18th century, with all surviving and going on to do it again?

[ladypuglover]

When I was a wee tot my mom had a very good friend who had 2 sets of identical twins. The mother(Lori) of the twins wanted to have more but her doctor warned her that her chances of having a singleton was almost nil. Lori didn't have any more children and neither of her daughters has twins as far as I know, but I lost touch with the family since my mom's passing. So some women can be more likely to have identical twins than others according to that doctor.

[jesusfreak]

Sounds like the game of Telephone. A little inaccuracy here. A little exaggeration there. And before you know it... Some guy had 69 kids from one wife!

[Lily]

I'm willing to bet that the story is not what it seems in one way or the next.

My bet is that they took on kids that weren't genetically theirs and that got misrepresented due to poor record keeping.

Orphans have always had a massive presence in Russian society. If we're relating to the rest of Europe in the 18th century, which had high levels of orphans throughout, peasant orphans in Russia would have been especially prevalent. I'm wondering if the family didn't take in whatever and whoever came their way, and the "multiples" were merely genetically unrelated children of the same age, thus counted as multiples by census? Birthdays weren't exactly kept track of back then for peasants, if they were roughly the same age or born in the same year, they may easily have been counted as multiples for tax purposes.

Combine that with an abnormally fertile woman with a still relatively plausible (15-20, or so?) number of births that she managed to survive, and the story could easily have snowballed out of that.

[Rachel333]

When I was a wee tot my mom had a very good friend who had 2 sets of identical twins. The mother(Lori) of the twins wanted to have more but her doctor warned her that her chances of having a singleton was almost nil. Lori didn't have any more children and neither of her daughters has twins as far as I know, but I lost touch with the family since my mom's passing. So some women can be more likely to have identical twins than others according to that doctor.

The doctor was wrong, unless he or she knows something scientists don't. There is no evidence that there is any genetic basis for identical twins.

[Lily]

When I was a wee tot my mom had a very good friend who had 2 sets of identical twins. The mother(Lori) of the twins wanted to have more but her doctor warned her that her chances of having a singleton was almost nil. Lori didn't have any more children and neither of her daughters has twins as far as I know, but I lost touch with the family since my mom's passing. So some women can be more likely to have identical twins than others according to that doctor.

And according to some doctors, AIDS is a conspiracy cooked up by {insert boogeyman du jour here} and doesn't really exist. Or if it does, it can be cured with orange juice or something, or it's being used as a TURRIRIZM force.

Just because some doctor, at some point, made a claim, does not make it true. And this is coming from a physician's wife, not some loony toon who rejects modern medicine ;)

Dizygotic (fraternal) twins can, but not always, have a genetic component or predisposition. Monozygotic (identical) twins are the result of a fertilised egg splitting itself and developing into two separate embryos. It's extremely well documented and well accepted how and under what conditions this occurs, and genetic predisposition has never been even casually linked to it. Maybe some doctor years ago didn't understand this, but the science behind the different types of twinning is pretty solid and almost completely accepted by the medical community of today.

[turquoise]

I'm willing to bet that the story is not what it seems in one way or the next.

My bet is that they took on kids that weren't genetically theirs and that got misrepresented due to poor record keeping.

Orphans have always had a massive presence in Russian society. If we're relating to the rest of Europe in the 18th century, which had high levels of orphans throughout, peasant orphans in Russia would have been especially prevalent. I'm wondering if the family didn't take in whatever and whoever came their way, and the "multiples" were merely genetically unrelated children of the same age, thus counted as multiples by census? Birthdays weren't exactly kept track of back then for peasants, if they were roughly the same age or born in the same year, they may easily have been counted as multiples for tax purposes.

Combine that with an abnormally fertile woman with a still relatively plausible (15-20, or so?) number of births that she managed to survive, and the story could easily have snowballed out of that.

This sounds a lot more believable than one woman giving birth to 69 children.

Triplet and quadruplet births are risky today. Several sources online put the average length of a triplet pregnancy at 32 weeks, and a quadruplet pregnancy at 29 weeks. Supposedly this woman had seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets. What seems more likely---she had over 30 children who survived high-risk pregnancies in the 1700s, or the story was exaggerated?

[Deleted03]

I don't have trouble believing that one woman on the billions on earth had 69 kids. On one of the books I read, they cited this medical marvel where the woman had a hysterectomy done by her butch husband because the last birth was complicated... she got pregnant once more and bore the baby ectopic and they both survived. But it's not because it happens a couple times in history that it's possible for everyone, or reproducible...

[Maul the Koala]

I'm more willing to bet that it was the Russian government's whims and fancies to have the country where a strong Russian woman bore 69 children! If you read about it someone in France tried to independently verify it back in the 1800s but one of the Tsar's ministers just replied "Oh we still have descendants of this family here and they're receiving favours from the Tsar" and left it at that.