Doctors and nurses are working hard to keep all nine premature babies, and their mother Halima Cisse, in good health – she is the only woman known to have given birth to nine babies at one time.
Cisse, who lives in Timbuktu in Mali, gave birth to nonuplets via caesarian section on Tuesday, 4 May and is only the third-ever recorded case of this rare phenomenon. There were two other cases of nonuplets in Malaysia and Australia, but the babies didn’t survive.
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The 25-year-old woman expected to deliver seven babies but doctors were shocked when they performed a caesarean section and discovered nine babies instead.
Cisse will remain in the care of doctors at the Ain Borja private clinic in Casablanca – where doctors and nurses are working hard to ensure all nine babies survive.
She spent two weeks prior to the birth at a hospital in Bamako before she was moved to the facility in Morocco for specialist care. Cisse went into premature labour at 30 weeks.
Doctors say all five girls and four boys are currently ‘doing well’ – they are all in incubators.
Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to six boys and two girls in California in 2009 holds the Guinness World Record for the most surviving children at birth.
Suleman conceived using in vitro fertilization (IVF) – but it is unclear how Cisse became impregnated with so many babies at one time.
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