65-Year-Old Woman Gives Birth To Quadruplets

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65-Year-Old Woman Gives Birth To Quadruplets

While most 65-year-olds are worrying about their grand children, Annegret Raunigk was giving birth to quadruplets. That's right, at 65 this woman was pregnant for the 14th time. Raunigk already had 13 children ranging in age from 44 to 9, but when her youngest child mentioned wanting a younger sibling, she realized that she wanted another baby.

Raunigk is already a grandmother, but she went looking for all the best fertility treatments to try and accomplish her goal. Because of her age, Raunigk had already gone through menopause, meaning that she wouldn't be able to conceive naturally.

AFP

She lives in Germany, where IVF is actually illegal, so she had to travel to the Ukraine. The process required a lot of steps that not a lot of people would go through, but it has resulted in four beautiful babies.

But it wasn't all smooth sailing...

Because IVF is illegal in Germany, the 65-year-old Raunigk had to travel to Ukraine to participate in the fertilization treatments. Because she had gone through menopause, she had to find not only donor sperm, but also a donor egg.

She soon realized that she had not one, but four babies on the way. That's a lot more then her youngest child had asked for! The ultrasound that revealed the quadruplets also caused the doctors to suggest selective reduction. Having one baby at her age was risky enough, let alone four. But even though it put her at risk, Raunigk refused the procedure and said that she would be keeping her babies.

She ended up going to the hospital three months before the due date and the babies needed to be delivered at only 26 weeks. While it was risky, all four quadruplets ended up surviving. She had three boys and one girl.

PFEIFFER/RTL

She named her new babies Neeta, Dries, Bence and Fijon and since their birth they have been doing very well.