if we believe Apollodorus' claim that Hecuba had 19 children, and give Hecuba on average six months to recover between each pregnancy, (the recommended absolute minimum, any shorter gap and the uterus doesn't have time to fully heal), plus extra time to account for an understandable mental health break after Paris' traumatic birth, and taking into account Helenus and Cassandra being twins, it seems pretty reasonable to assume a 25 year age gap between Hector as the oldest and Polydorus as the youngest.
and if we assume Hecuba was no younger than 18 when she got married and had Hector within a year, that puts her at around 43 when she had her last child. i acknowledge that many girls in the bronze age were married younger, but i just think if she was any younger, the first few teen pregnancies would have depleted her so much she wouldn't have been healthy enough to keep going for so long. like, pregnancy pulls minerals from your bones, a pregnancy any younger could have stunted her growth. the fact that every one of her children survived infancy also suggests she was in her physical prime, while the infants of young mothers were more likely to die.
but yeah. 43. that's definitely considered a geriatric pregnancy, but still a decade off from menopause. with good nutrition, minimal physical labour, and decent midwives (plus Apollo's favour) and wetnurses, it's definitely do-able. but my gods, Hecuba, did you really need so many? could you not have stopped at, say, 10? honestly, she was probably at least a little bit annoyed that she capped out at 19 instead of the nice round number 20.
