Reports: 65-year-old German woman pregnant with quadruplets
Annegret Raunigk, a language teacher in Berlin, tried for years to get pregnant again. Her youngest daughter, who is nine, said she wanted a little brother or sister.
It is a natural instinct for a parent to try and give their kids what they want, but Raunigk is a little different than most: she's 65 years old and already has 13 children and seven grandchildren.
According to multiple reports in German media, she's now pregnant with quadruplets.
German broadcaster RTL is expected to air an interview with Raunigk Monday evening, and when they asked her about the moral implications of her pregnancy, she said: "I think one must decide that for oneself."
In an interview with Das Bild newspaper, Raunigk said she was shocked to hear her multiple attempts at artificial insemination resulted in quadruplets. She also told Das Bild she never considered reducing the number of fertilized embryos.
RTL reports that Raunigk is due this summer, and if the pregnancy is successfully carried to term, she will be the oldest recorded mother of quadruplets.
But doctors note the situation carries high risks for both the mother and the unborn babies.
"Any pregnancy of a woman over age 45 has to be considered a high-risk pregnancy; over 60 this is naturally extreme," Dr. Holger Stepan, head of obstetrics at the University of Leipzig, told the dpa news agency.
"The 65-year-old body is definitely not designed to carry a pregnancy, not of one child and certainly not of quadruplets," he said.