multiple births

[DizBelle]

I have a question:

What is the greatest number of natural multiple births to have ever occurred? That would be multiple births that occurred without the assistance of fertility treatments.

 

[Bob Slydell]

According to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_birth

The most common form of human multiple birth is twins (two babies), but cases of higher orders up to octuplets (eight babies) have all been recorded with all siblings being born alive. The largest set in which all members survived more than a few days is septuplets, the first of which was in 1997. The largest set to have even a single member survive is octuplets, in 1998 (with the seven surviving octuplets born in Texas).

There have been a few sets of nonuplets (nine) in which a few babies were born alive, though none lived longer than a few days. There have been cases of human pregnancy which started out with ten, eleven, twelve and fifteen fetuses, but no known instances of live births of such high multiples in a single pregnancy. Most of these pregnancies are a result of fertility medications, though a set of duodecaplets (twelve) was conceived spontaneously (without the aid of fertility treatments) in Argentina in 1992.

 

[lucyblondecat]

Yikes, ninie?!

I have twins, that was hard enough. I can't imagine 7 more in there.

 

[paigevz]

Also from Wikipedia (just fyi):

In general, twins occur naturally at approximately the rate of 1/89 of singleton births, triplets at 1/89 the rate of twin births, and so on (Hellin's Law). However, for reasons that are unknown, the older a woman is, the more likely she is to naturally have a multiple birth.

 

[paigevz]

And this from twinstuff.com:

There are also several other examples of multiple births, involving octuplets or even nine, 10 or as many as 15 fetuses, but with all resulting in all babies being miscarried or stillborn or with just one or two surviving babies.

Included in those cases were reports of decaplets (10 babies) being born to mothers in Spain in 1924, China in 1936, Brazil in 1947 but it is unknown if any babies survived. All three of those births, if they can be verified, would have been conceived without the use of fertility drugs.

There is also a very ancient legend, circa 1200, that speaks of a woman having hundreds of children in one birth, naming all boys Jan and all girls Elizabeth. Versions of this legend are told in different countries and different ways, and it has been depicted in art as well.