Sunday, May 01, 2005

Swoon II - the Internet lookup

Following my mysterious blackout on Wednesday, I decided to look up fainting and pregnancy on the Internet.

Babycentre says that it's not uncommon because the heart rate goes up, more blood is being pumped and the amount of blood in the system expands (by 40-45%). Apparently, now is about the time my blood pressure is at its lowest.

Then I found a discussion group, in which one woman says she's been pregnant fifteen times! When I saw that number, I stopped looking for stuff about fainting.

So I looked up parenthood records...

- Most number of children - 69, over a period of 40 years. 67 of them survived past infancy
- Youngest mother - 5 years, 7 months
- Youngest father - 12 years
- Oldest mother - 63 years, 9 months
- Oldest father - 93 years, 10 months

And a couple of rather interesting FAQs here:

- Highest number of children given birth to at one time - 9 (none survived past a week)
- It takes longer to give birth to boys than to girls

9 comments:

Jon said...

Youngest mother 5 years 7 months????? Did you enter that in correctly? That is so wrong and disgusting. Did the guy who did that to her have absolutely no morals whatsoever??? Shudder. Now I'm going to have nightmares.

Draic said...

5 years old! Not only is that wrong and disgusting, but I was under the impression it wasn't even possible! That's very scary.

LK said...

I agree on the child mother thing, so very wrong and incredibly scary.

To digress, I blacked out constantly during my first pregnancy. Probably something to do with my freakishly low blood pressure, being anaemic, and being quite ill, but just wanted to let you know you're not alone.

Watson Woodworth said...

I have heard of children in Latin America capable of bearing children at the age of seven, but I figured it was just really disturbing talk.
As for the birth of nine, if they all were viable I would have to call it "Instant Utah".

Geekery said...

I agree with everything said about the youngst mother thing, but want to focus on girls being quicker to give birth to than boys - i have no experience with boys (hell, I'm a man, so basically I have NO experience past that of being a viewer, catcher and cutter) but my lovely wife did give birth to daughter number 3 in a little over an hour, which I'm told is pretty quick!

Violet said...

I think we all agree on the extremely young age of motherhood as both disgusting and wrong. Funny, but I was so focussed on how she must've been fed on hormally-enhanced beef, that I forgot that somewhere out there was a guy who'd have sex with a 5 year old.

llcoffee: the most worrying thing if deciding whether it's okay to drive or go for a swim, since it's not so easy to stop and have a sit down if I feel faint during these times...

nigel: or instant pope-making

onscreen: it's what I'm hopin' for

Frally said...

I will not comment on the 5 year old as everything's already been said. I think the boys taking longer thing comes from the fact that boys are generally bigger babies than girls. However, I would take it with a grain of salt as there are so many factors that determine labours length other than the size of the baby.

Violet said...

Frally: after reading all about episiotomies, I'm just hoping the baby is a long and narrow one...

glomgold said...

Those are ghastly numbers!!!