A popular doctor on TikTok has dished the dirt on how many babies can fit inside the womb – and his revelation left us a little queasy, if not still marvelling at the wonders of the human body.
Dr Karan Raj shared a video of a mum who gave birth to triplets. In the clip, she can be seen with a heavily pregnant stomach that looks, well, pretty uncomfortable.
So, how many babies can fit inside the womb? “We don’t know the limit yet,” said Dr Raj. “The anatomical growth and stretch potential of the uterus is wild.”
He’s not lying. In 2021, a woman called Halima Cissé gave birth to nine – yes, NINE – healthy babies. They are the world’s only nonuplets.
Reports suggested Cissé had been expecting seven babies, as ultrasound scans missed the other two. She gave birth in Morocco to five girls and four boys, The Independent reported, which were delivered via C-section.
Dr Raj likened the mother’s uterus, while holding nine babies, to “the size of two large watermelons squished together”.
“Interestingly, the limit is not so much about the number of foetuses, but the weight,” added the doctor. “If you have enough weight in the womb, that can cause the uterus to go into labour.
“So whether it’s one foetus, two, three or even nine, if you have enough volume or mass that will signal to the uterus that it’s time to eject these freeloaders.”
Slate reported that once the total weight of the babies inside reaches about 12lbs, the uterus will decide it’s time to go into labour. And the more babies inside, the earlier they’re likely to turn up (because they’ll reach the accumulative weight quicker than one baby).
Dr Raj said the body will know that an increasing number of babies will increase the risk of maternal and foetal complications, “so will set some sort of vague biological limit”.
The uterine muscle also has a predetermined anatomical point of failure, he added, beyond which no more stretch is possible and it can’t accommodate any more occupants.
While one or two babies is the norm for most parents, there was a case of healthy octuplets (that’s eight babies, FYI) being born at 30 weeks in California in 2009.
And in 1971, Dr Gennaro Montanino, based in Rome, claimed to have removed 15 foetuses from the womb of a 35-year-old woman. A fertility drug was thought to be responsible for this unique instance of quindecaplets, according to Guinness World Records.