In Uganda lives a woman named Mariam Nabatanzi Babirye, known to many as “Mother Uganda.” She has given birth to 44 children, 38 of whom are still alive.

Her story is not one of choice, but of unimaginable endurance. Married off at just 12 years old and a mother by 13, Mariam’s life became defined by survival, responsibility, and love stretched across generations.

Mariam suffers from a rare condition called hyperovulation, which causes her body to release multiple eggs during each cycle.

That biological anomaly turned her into a mother of twins, triplets, and quadruplets again and again until, by the age of 36, she had brought 44 lives into the world.

Doctors warned her that trying to stop the pregnancies could endanger her life. And so, she bore them all.

When her husband abandoned her in 2015, Mariam was left alone to raise dozens of children. She worked tirelessly, braiding hair, collecting scrap metal, and farming to feed them, clothe them, and send them to school.

Each child became both her burden and her purpose. Her laughter, though weary, carries the strength of a thousand storms.

There is heartbreak in her story, of a girl forced to grow up too soon, of a woman whose body became a battlefield, of a mother who gave everything without ever being given enough. Yet, in the eyes of her children, she is hope itself.

Mariam Nabatanzi is proof that love can exist even in exhaustion, and that sometimes, the most heroic lives are lived quietly, in the face of overwhelming odds.

Source: Project Nightfall