A Ugandan woman is reported to have given birth to a jaw-dropping 38 children and she is only 37 years old.
Mariam Nabatanzi, who hails from the Kabimbiri village in Uganda, has been dubbed “the most fertile woman” after she has been reported to have 38 children, all from the same man.
Nabatanzi has delivered all her children home except the last born who is four months old. She was delivered by caesarean section. Among her children are six sets of twins, four sets of triplets, three sets of quadruples and single births. Ten of her children are girls and the rest are boys with the oldest being 23 years old while the youngest four months.
She was married off to a 40 year old man when she was 12 years old in 1993.
“I did not know I was being married off. People came home and brought things for my father. When time came for them to leave, I thought I was escorting my aunt but when I got there, she gave me away to the man.”
“My husband was polygamous with many children from his past relationships who I had to take care of because their mothers were scattered all over. He was also violent and would beat me at any opportunity he got even when I suggested an idea that he didn’t like,” she recounts.
She gave birth to her first set of twins in 1994, just a year into her marriage and aged 13. Two years later, she gave birth to triplets and a year and seven months after that added a set of quadruplets. By her sixth delivery, Mariam had 18 children and wanted to stop, so, she went to see a doctor at Namaliili Hospital. She was told by the doctor that she could not be stopped then because she had a high ovary count which would eventually kill her if she stopped.
“I was advised to keep producing since putting this on hold would mean death. I tried using the Inter Uterine Device (IUD) but I got sick and vomited a lot, to the point of near death. I went into a coma for a month,” she explains.
At the birth of her four-month-old child who was delivered by C-section in December last year, she says; “I asked the doctor to stop me from more births and he said he had ‘cut my uterus from inside’. This was my only Cesarean delivery because I was still weak from the sickness I suffered when I tried to use an IUD.”
According to Dr Charles Kiggundu, a gynecologist at Mulago Hospital and President of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians, “Her case is genetic predisposition to hyper-ovulate (releasing multiple eggs in one cycle), which significantly increases the chance of having multiples; it is always genetic.”
Mariam who does odd jobs to take care of her children says, “I am hopeful that my children will go to school because they all have big ambitions of being doctors, teachers and lawyers; I want them to realise these dreams, something I was not able to do.”