Ugandan mother delivers 38 kids in 24 years

KAYUNGA, Uganda — Mariam Nabatanzi Babirye has five houses squeezed into her compound. It gives a semblance of a school as children run around playing.

The 37-year-old single mother, who first became pregnant at age 13 and has given birth to 38 children, is a famous figure in the small town of Kasawo in the central Ugandan district Kayunga.

Known as ‘Nalongo Muzaala Bana’ (the twin mother that produces quadruples), Babirye has delivered mostly twins, triplets and quadruplets.

Her first assignment every day is to wash a heap of clothes for her children. She has to do it early in the morning to save time for other daily housework.

At breakfast time, the kids sit in a circle. More than a dozen of them are absent, but one loaf of bread is not enough to feed them all.

Babirye digs into her pockets for some money, then sends one of the older children to a nearby shop to buy more.

Babirye’s story did not have a happy start. Her mother abandoned her at young age following a breakup with her father.

At 12, Babirye’s father married her off in exchange for cows, as per the cultural norm of the day. She was 13 years old when she first got pregnant in 1994.

Now Babirye has six sets of twins, four sets of triplets, three sets of quadruplets and two single births. She said at some point she had a miscarriage of five babies when she was five months pregnant.

She tried several birth control plans but they could not work as she got severe side effects.

“I used to have a lot of side effects when I use family planning methods, so the health workers asked me to stop using them. They told me to continue giving birth or else I would die,” she said.

Local media reported some doctors said her high ovary count could bring severe side effects to her if she stopped getting pregnant.

Charles Kiggundu, a gynecologist at Uganda’s national referral hospital, told her that although it is not common, some women are capable of giving repeated multiple births.