Watch out, Duggars! The expansive 19 Kids and Counting family has some new competition from a brood in Germany.
A 65-year-old woman named Annegret Raunigk is making headlines abroad as she awaits the birth of four children. The Berlin-based elementary school teacher is reportedly already the mother of 13 kids and is expecting quadruplets.
According to multiple German news outlets, Raunigk had her last and 13th child, daughter Lelia nearly 10 years ago. Her latest foray into parenting is being documented on the local RTL network show Extra, as the mother expands her family to a total of 17 children.
Raunigk has a bevy of sons and daughters, ranging in age from 9 to 44, some with children of their own. According to RTL, the woman tried repeatedly to get pregnant in recent years through artificial insemination, finally achieving her goal earlier this year.
“After the doctor discovered there were four, I had to give it some thought to begin with,” Raunigk said in an interview with the Bild newspaper, according to Agence France Presse. “Certainly that was a shock for me.”
“I’m not actually afraid,” she added of welcoming four new little ones. “I simply assume I’ll remain healthy and fit. In matters of organization I have enough experience, that’s not new for me.”
Raunigk, who tried to take the attention away from her age in her latest interviews, stressing her love for children, revealed at the time of her last child’s birth that she did not intend to have such an expansive family.
“At first, I only wanted one child,” she told Bild in 2005, according to AFP. “Not all were planned. But then things happen… and children keep me young.”
