14 DAY TRIAL // 65-year-old Annegret Raunigk, a pensioner living in Berlin's Spandau borough in Germany, is now pregnant with quadruplets. Should all go well, she will deliver in just a few weeks.
The quadruplets Annegret Raunigk will soon give birth to are not the woman's only children. On the contrary, the pensioner has 13 other children, the oldest being 44 years old and the youngest 13.
The woman got pregnant at the request of her youngest daughter
Given her age, Annegret Raunigk found it impossible to conceive naturally. To get pregnant, she had doctors implant fertilize eggs into her womb. Both the eggs and the male gametes used to fertilize them came from anonymous donors.
The 65-year-old says that, although she is very much excited at the thought of becoming a mother once more, she didn't exactly get pregnant on her own accord.
It was her youngest child, 13-year-old Leila, who encouraged her to turn to artificial insemination to give her either a little brother or a little sister. Both Annegret and Leila got way more than what they bargained for.
65-year-old Annegret Raunigk is now in her fifth month of pregnancy. She's not in perfect health condition, but doctors say that this has less to do with her age and a whole lot to do with the fact that she is carrying quadruplets.
“The pregnancy so far makes no distinction between the body of a younger or older person but quadruplet pregnancies are always a high burden,” said Kai Hertwig, one of the doctors handling her case, as cited by DM.
Although she is now looked after by medical experts in Germany, the woman was inseminated by doctors in Ukraine. It is unclear how much the procedure cost her and how many times she had to be inseminated before she actually got pregnant.
The 65-year-old doesn't get what people are fussing over
Yes, she is a pensioner who happens to be pregnant with quadruplets. Still, this does not give people the right to discuss her life choices or make comments about whether or not she should become a mother once more, Annegret Raunigk insists.
“There will obviously be clichés bandied about, and I find that quite strenuous. But I have always been a person who says live and let live and it is not for the opinion of others but for me,” she said in an interview.
Mind you, this isn't Annegret Raunigk's first controversial pregnancy. Well over a decade ago, the woman made headlines when she delivered Leila and became Germany's oldest mother.
