It’s no secret to us women that our ability to have children is based on a ticking biological clock. Doctors today sometimes refer to pregnancies in women aged 35 and older as “advanced maternal age” or AMA, and on average, women hit menopause at 51 years old.
However, strides in maternal-fetal medicine have given way to new technology, like IVF, that helps not only those struggling with infertility conceive but also older mothers.
So, one burning question has emerged in our modern age: should there still be an age limit (or child limit) when it comes to continually growing your family?
The case of MaryBeth Lewis encapsulates why some might argue “yes.” The nurse, who resides in Rochester, New York, is reportedly addicted to having kids, and her desire to add more babies to her home led her to allegedly commit surrogacy fraud.
Currently 68 years old, MaryBeth began having children with her husband, Bob, when she was in her twenties. She gave birth to five kids from then until her thirties.
And after MaryBeth’s once-little kids started to grow up and leave home, she decided to undergo IVF and wound up delivering twins shortly before she turned 50.
The following decade brought even more babies into the Lewis household: another daughter and twin boys by the time MaryBeth was 55 in 2012.
After birthing that set of twins, though, and becoming a mother of 10, she and Bob reportedly ran out of embryos. Rather than stopping there, MaryBeth and her husband turned to donor-created embryos.
She was impregnated with them, and the process allowed her to give birth to a third set of twins at 59 years old. Finally, she had her last child at age 62.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
In the wake of her thirteenth child being born, MaryBeth’s doctors reportedly claimed any additional pregnancies would be at higher risk.
Bob, who worked as a pilot, also did not want to have any more kids. And even her own children allegedly begged her to stop adding more babies to their family.
This is seemingly what pushed MaryBeth to take extreme measures and allegedly commit fraud. First, she forged Bob’s signature on numerous documents and hired a surrogate.
Next, she turned to the same batch of donor embryos they’d previously used to make their youngest children and “tricked” an IVF clinic into implanting those donor embryos in the surrogate. She reportedly paid $160,000 throughout this process.
Then came MaryBeth’s impersonation of her husband on a Zoom call. She attended an online parentage order hearing with a judge to ensure she’d get custody of the two babies (another set of twins) her surrogate was carrying.
But since Bob wasn’t aware of any of this, MaryBeth reportedly created a fake Zoom account under his name, joined the call, and pretended to be him. She even told the judge that her husband was traveling in Japan, which is why his camera needed to remain off.
Bob only learned that his wife had been secretly orchestrating the creation of two more babies when the parentage order arrived at their Rochester residence. The rest of the documents were supposedly sent to a post office, instead of their home address, leading up to the discovery.
Outraged, Bob contacted the police to report MaryBeth’s fraud, and his whistleblowing sparked an investigation into the Lewis family.
Their latest set of twins was subsequently born in November 2023, and due to the alleged fraud, the two kids were placed in foster care.
The same year, MaryBeth was indicted on various counts, such as criminal impersonation in the first degree, forgery in the second degree, perjury in the second degree, and attempted kidnapping in the second degree.
“We can’t just have crimes committed with relation to the creation of life and then have them get exactly what they wanted under that criminal conduct,” a Department of Social Services attorney reportedly stated at a hearing.
Nonetheless, in a perhaps shocking turn of events, Bob actually eventually agreed to sign onto the parentage order. As for MaryBeth, she turned down two plea offers and continued fighting for custody of the twins, who are now 2 years old.
So, this October, a new judge moved forward with ruling that MaryBeth and Bob are the twins’ legal parents. Despite that, the twins’ foster parents appealed the decision and are trying to keep the toddlers in their care.
It remains to be seen whether the foster parents will be successful, or if the Lewis family will be raising their child count to 15. MaryBeth is also supposed to stand trial in March.
By Katharina Buczek
Katharina Buczek graduated from Stony Brook University with a degree in Journalism and a minor in Digital Arts. Specializing in... More about Katharina Buczek
