A baffling report has left many wondering after a Ugandan woman who has given birth to 38 children revealed how she achieved the feat.
Here is the full report according to Ugandian media site, Daily Monitor:
Lost along the way, a boda boda rider offers to lead me to her home since they know her by her unique name.
Nalongo Muzaala Bana (the twin mother that produces quadruples) is
what Mariam Nabatanzi Babirye goes by where she resides in Kabimbiri
village, Mukono District.
An overcrowded neighborhood with children running all over welcomes me to Nabatanzi’s home.
At 37, Nabatanzi has 38 children whom she has delivered from 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 these
are girls and the rest are boys. The oldest is 23 years old while the
youngest four months.
Eager to tell her story, she takes a minute before getting into it,
tilting her head lost in thoughts. She was married off at 12 years of
age after surviving death; allegedly at her stepmother’s hands who
apparently pounded glass and mixed it in the food she gave Nabatanzi and
her four siblings. Fortunately, she was away unlike her siblings who
ate the food and died on the spot.
Married off
Nabatanzi breaks down when she recalls what she went through upon
getting married. In 1993, she was married off to a 40-year-old man.
“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.”
Being only a young girl, she found marriage a difficult task in the new family.
“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.
Starting a family
Her father-in-law gave them a piece of land to start their family, a family for which she planned to have six children.
In 1994, when she was 13, Nabatanzi gave birth to twins. Two years
later, she gave birth to triplets and a year and seven months after that
added a set of quadruplets. This, she says was nothing strange to her
because she had seen it before in her lineage. “My father gave birth to 45 children with different women and these all came in quintuplets, quadruples, twins and triplets,” she says.
Indeed, Dr Charles Kiggundu, a gynecologist at Mulago Hospital and
President of gynaecologists and obstetricians, says it is very possible
for Nabatanzi to have taken after her father. “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,” he explains.
By her sixth delivery, Nabatanzi had had 18 children and wanted to stop, so, she went to see a doctor at Namaliili Hospital.
The problem
The doctor told Nabatanzi that she could not be stopped then
because she had a high ovary count which would eventually kill her if
she stopped.
“Having these unfertilised eggs accumulate poses not only a
threat to destroy the reproductive system but can also make the woman
lose their lives,” Dr Ahmed Kikomeko from Kawempe General Hospital explains.
“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 age of 23 with now 25 children, she went back to hospital to try and stop. “I was checked in at Mulago Hospital and advised to continue producing since the ovary count was still high.”
