Mother expecting her 14th child vows: 'I'll keep having babies until I have twins'

A pregnant woman silhouetted against a set of blinds

A mother expecting her 14th child has vowed to keep having children until she has twins.

Sara Foss, 39, already picks up £50,000 in benefits every year.

She said: 'All I've ever wanted is twins or triplets. It's my biggest wish, and I'm going to keep trying until I do it.

'It would be fantastic. In fact, I won't stop trying until I've done it. I love having babies - it's the most wonderful thing in the world.'



Miss Foss, of Derby, was 16 when she had her first baby, Patrick, in 1986.



But, traumatised by giving birth, she vowed not to have any more children. It was a decade before she changed her mind and had a second son, Stephen.

She has almost averaged one birth a year since.

Miss Foss said: 'I got over my fear of labour and just started having kids. They're all brilliant. They don't give me any bother. They're fantastic.'

All bar Patrick share a three-bedroom council house with their mother and father, Miss Foss's long-term partner Stephen Smith, 40.

Even though Mr Smith works as a canal boat builder, the couple receives £4,200 in tax credits and family allowance every month.

Yet Miss Foss, who has just run up a £5,000 bill buying her children's Christmas gifts at Toys R Us, claims they have to watch every penny.

She insisted yesterday: 'I had been saving up all year so that we would have enough money to get all the presents. It was really hard work.

'We were in the shop for hours. Stephen had to do several trips home to take back what we had bought. I had blisters afterwards.'

Each week the family forks out around £600 on groceries - including 32 loaves of bread, 75lb of potatoes and 126 pints of milk.

They also buy 36 rolls of toilet paper, three boxes of washing powder and eight boxes of cereal during their regular supermarket shop.



Ms Foss named her seven-year-old son after Frodo from Lord of the Rings, her nine-month-old is called Voorhees after the Friday the 13th horror film character and her five-year-old is named Morpheus after the Matrix rebel leader



The annual school uniform bill is £2,000, and their holiday at Butlin's costs even more - mainly because they have to hire a minibus.

Miss Foss begins her chores at 4am every morning and keeps the house spotless to avoid being tagged a layabout scrounger.

She said: 'If people saw us living in a pigsty they would say that we were a scrounging, low-life family who begged from the state.

'They would say I was a slapper for having so many children and that I couldn't even be bothered to keep the house looking nice.

'And that's so not true. Even when I'm straight I can't put my feet up. I've been known to take down curtains at midnight and wash them.'

She added: 'We have a lot of bunkbeds and cots. All the furniture in the bedrooms is on wheels so that we can move it at bedtime.

'Baudelaire sleeps in a travel cot, and a couple of the lads use an airbed. It's a squash and a squeeze, but it's cosy. It's home.'

Now 20 weeks' pregnant with baby number 14, Miss Foss is preparing to welcome the clan's latest arrival - and already planning for more.

She said: 'I wanted two - that's the disappointing part of this pregnancy. But there's always next time. I'm going to keep trying, that's for sure.'





Why Miss Foss gave her children such exotic names

Sara Foss and Stephen Smith have enjoyed conjuring up wild and wacky names for their 13 children.

We've listed them, from oldest to youngest, and given Sara's reasons for their names.

Patrick – named after Sara's grandmother's surname of Patrick

Stephen – after his doting dad, Stephen

Malachai – after a character in the horror film, Children of the Corn

Peppermint – after Sara started craving mints during her fourth pregnancy

Echo – after a group of eco-campaigners who Stephen met during a job at work

Eli – another character in the 1984 film Children of the Corn

Rogue – a character in the film X-Men

Frodo – hobbit in Lord of the Rings

Morpheus – a character in film, The Matrix, staring Keanu Reeves

Artemis – book character, Artemis Fowl, an obnoxious teenage criminal

Blackbird – named after a gathering of blackbirds which flew onto Sara's lawn

Baudelaire – named after the Baudelaire orphans which featured in Lemony Snicket's film A Series of Unfortunate Events

Voorhees – named after serial killer, Jason Voorhees in the horror movie, Friday The 13th