Annegret Raunigk, a German primary school teacher, who already has 13 children and 7 grandchildren, is pregnant again. That would not have been newsworthy enough if not for the fact that she is 65 years of age and expecting quadruplets this time. Her oldest child is 44 and the youngest one, a daughter, is nine. Raunigk says she wants to have another child so that her nine year old has someone to play with.
The school teacher is already in the 21st week of her pregnancy and has had, thus far, no complications whatsoever. Her health is being monitored closely because older women are more likely to deliver premature babies. The children are expected this summer. The pregnancy is a result of several attempts at artificial insemination over the last 18 months.
Experts usually advise against pregnancies after the age of 35 and some in the medical profession have come down heavily against her decision to have babies at this age.
“Any pregnancy of a woman over age 45 has to be considered a high-risk pregnancy; over 60 this is naturally extreme,” said Dr. Holger Stepan, head of obstetrics at the University of Leipzig.
“The 65-year-old body is definitely not designed to carry a pregnancy, not of one child and certainly not of quadruplets,” Stepan said.
Raunigk however is unfazed by all the criticism though she admits she was shocked when she got to know that she was carrying not one but four children in all. Her doctors suggested that she abort one of the fetuses, which could have increased the survival rate of the others.
“That was a shock for me,”Raunigk told Bild. “After the doctor found that there are four, I had to just think about it.”
The 65-year-old decided to take her chances.
“I’m not afraid,” she said.
That does not, however, make her the oldest women to have a baby. That record rests safe, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, with a woman who delivered twins a few days before her 67th birthday.
