Learn about the young mother who gave birth to 17 kids at once by joining us. A composite image with two Karones photographs has been shared in a number of postings on Facebook. The claim is untrue; the narrative came from a satirical website; one of the photographs has been altered; the other image has been taken out of context; and the American “octuplet mother” Nadya Suleman now holds the record for having delivered the most children from a single womb—eight.
Misleading posts, such as this one posted by a Sri Lankan Facelook user on June 12, 2019, which has been shared over 600 times, contain a composite image that combines an image of a heavily pregnant woman and a photograph of a man in hospital uniform surrounded by ƄeƄés.
“Catherine Bridge has set the world record by giving birth to 17 ees,” the caption that appears above the picture reads. All of them are Aarons.
The post’s English translation of the Sinhala language reads, “May the Three Jewels pray to the mother who gave birth to 17 eés aron babies and broke a world record. Isn’t it wonderful that Sinhalese had cheese like this?
The statement has also been circulated on Instagram here and on Twitter, for instance here, here, and here.
Since at least 2016, similar assertions have appeared online, for instance here.
This claim is untrue.
This picture was published on an artists’ social network as a result of a Yandex image search that was incorporated in the article.
The image in the misleading post has been digitally manipulated to make the woman appear more pregnant. Below is a side-by-side comparison of the original photo (i) and the image in the misleading post (R):
An internal Google image search of the photograph of the man in the green hospital uniform found the same photograph posted here on the Facelook page of a doctor named RoƄert Biter on August 3, 2012.
A keyword Google search of the text in the misleading posts found this article, published on the satirical website World Daily News Report in February 2014.
The headline reads: “USA: Mother Gives Birth to 17 ƄeƄés at ʋez”.
The introductory paragraph of the satirical article reads in part: “An American woman has utterly annihilated the old world record for most ƄeƄes in a single pregnancy by giving birth to 17 ƄeƄes in 29 hours last weekend at Memorial Hospital. from Indianapolis.
“Catherine Bridges and her husband have been trying for a child for many years and decided last year to use medical assistance from a fertility clinic in Rhode Island.”
The website included this disclaimer page noting that its articles are “satirical and fictitious” in nature.
This is not the first time that hoaxes have circulated about a record number of births on the web. Here is a report published by AFP about a similar claim.
According to the Guinness World Records website, the current holder of the record for “the most children delivered from one ʋez and overʋiʋients” is the American Nadya Suleмan, who turned eight ƄeƄés in January 2009.
