She was a Russian woman who had 69 children between 1725 and 1765, according to Guinness. The book of records does not record the name of the supermom, but claims that she was the wife of the peasant Feodor Vassilyev, who, of course, did not have a television in the house. During the 40 years of intensive motherhood, Mrs Vassilyev had 27 births: 16 twins, 7 triplets and 4 quadruplets. But Guinness also honors another great mother, the Chilean Leontina Albino, as the greatest “mother of modern times”. Leontina claimed to have had 64 children, but “only” 55 of them were documented, between 1943 and 1981. Multiple pregnancies in women are a rare fact in medicine. “The human species and larger mammals, in general, have a single pregnancy or, at most, a double pregnancy”, says gynecologist Caio Parente Barbosa, professor of genetics and human reproduction at the Faculdade de Medicina do ABC. “These women probably had some genetic defect that caused them to generate too many eggs,” he says. Multiple pregnancies, in addition to being rare, are dangerous for mothers. As pregnancy “steals” energy from the mother, the more children in the womb, the greater the “assault”. Multiple pregnancies also increase the possibility of infection, uterine rupture, diabetes and high blood pressure. In Brazil, the woman who gave birth the most was Madalena Carnaúba, from Ceilândia (DF), who had 32 offspring. Today, each Brazilian family has an average of 1.6 children, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).
