Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Some crazy and amazing pregnancy facts

So, seeing as how I spend a lot of time looking into stuff about babies and pregnancy, I became interested to know some of the crazy pregnancy world records that have occurred. So here are a few things I came across on the Internet. Now I must note that I searched for documented information, but it was hard to find for all of these, so if you don't believe it, look it up for yourself.

1. The youngest mother ever was a five year old girl in Peru named Lina Medina, who gave birth to a baby boy by C-section in May of 1939. You can read more about it and see pics here.

2. As far as the youngest father goes, I can only find sites that state that in 1910 in China a boy and a girl who were 8 and 9 years old were the world's youngest parents. I can't find any documentation of this fact though.

3. The biggest baby ever born, according to the The Guinness Book of World Records, weighed 23.12lb (10.8kg) and died 11 hours after birth. The baby was born to Anna Bates of Canada in 1879.

4.The smallest baby ever born that survived is Rumaisa Shaik. She weighed only 8.6 oz and was only 10 inches long. She was born on Sept. 19, 2004. You can read more and see pics here.

5. A Russian woman who was known only as "the wife of Feodor Vassilyev" from the village of Shuya, gave birth to 69 children in the 18th century during 27 pregnancies. The matriarch produced 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four quadruplets. Some people say this is in the Guinness Book of World Records and others disagree, so I am not sure.

6. In 1998 the Chukwu octuplets were born in Houston. Unfortunately the smallest one died a week after birth. In 1997 the McCaughey septuplets were born and were the first surviving set of septuplets.