Single Mom Gives Birth to 44 Children by the Time She’s 40, Doctors Forbid Her to Have More
Mariam Nabatanzi delivered twins a year after she was married off at the age of 12. Five more sets of twins followed — along with four sets of triplets and five sets of quadruplets.
Mariam suffers from a rare genetic condition and by the time she was 36 she had given birth to 44 children. Mariam says medics took action to stop her becoming pregnant again .She added that her doctor told her he had “cut my uterus from inside”.
Three years ago, however, the 39-year-old Ugandan was abandoned by her husband, leaving her to support their surviving 38 children alone.This has thrown her family into poverty.
She lives with her children in four cramped houses made of cement blocks and topped with corrugated iron in a village surrounded by coffee fields 31 miles north of Kampala.
She works tirelessly to make sure she feeds her youngsters and keeps a roof over their head.
Mariam works as a hairdresser, an event decorator and collects and sells scrap metal.
She also brews her own local gin to sell and makes herbal medicine.
Mariam is determined her children will have all the chances in life that she was denied.
Most of her wages are spent on food, medical care, clothes and school fees.
Photos of her older children graduating from school hang proudly on the walls of her home.
But despite Mariam’s best efforts, one of her children, Ivan Kibuka, had to drop out of school to help raise the family.
She has metal bunk beds that 12 of her children sleep in but the others have to share either mattresses on the floor or sleep in the dirt because there simply isn’t the space.
And no matter how young, all the children have to help out with the chores.
The family gets through 25kgs of maize flour every day to mke sure they have enough to eat – but meat and fish are rare treats.
Mariam also has a rota of cooking and washing duties, proudly on display on a wooden board in the home.
Source:
thesun.co.uk, mirror.co.uk
