Nigerian Couple Welcome Sextuplets After 17 Years of Childlessness

Nigerian couple Ajibola and Adeboye Taiwo have welcomed sextuplets after waiting 17 years to conceive.

Based in Virginia, United States, Ajibola and her husband Adeboye welcomed sextuplets in to their family with the help of a 40-person medical team at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Medical Center, according to Fox News.

The babies — 3 boys and 3 girls — weighed between 1 pound and 10 ounces to 2 pounds and 15 ounces.

A statement released by hospital authorities after the births said all six babies were doing well and would continue to be monitored at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU’s neonatal intensive care unit.

A Big Surprise

Doctors told the couple after a routine ultrasound scan in November to prepare for the arrival of four babies, but then another scan in January at the VCU Medical Center revealed Mrs. Taiwo was actually pregnant with two more and carrying sextuplets.

“I was excited,” Adeboye said. “For the very first time, we were expecting.”

The 40-man medical team at the VCU included nurses, anesthesiologists, social workers, nutritionists, cardiologists, hospital chaplain services personnel, and experts from maternal-fetal medicine and neonatal medicine.

“The medical team is excellent in medicine and hospitality,” said Adeboye. “We are far from home, but the medical team is our family. That is what got us this far.”

“We’re going through this extraordinary journey together with the family,” Ronald Ramus, MD, director of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at VCU Medical Center, explained.

“It’s not every day that parents bring home sextuplets. Mrs. Taiwo was eating, sleeping, and breathing for seven. A lot of the support and encouragement we gave her to make it as far as she did was important and one of the biggest contributions we made as a team.”

Mrs. Taiwo gave birth via C-section at 30 weeks on May 11th and was discharged a week later on May 18th. Like her husband, she also expressed her gratitude to the hospital officials and nursed the hope that some of her babies will grow up to pursue careers in medicine.

“I hope for the smallest of my six children to grow up and say, ‘I was so small and look at me now.’ I want my kids [to] come back to VCU to study and learn to care for others with the same people who cared for me and my family.”

According to the U.S.’ Center for Disease Control, multiple births of the order of four (quintuplets) or more are very rare with only 24 recorded out of the 4 million live births in the United States in 2015.

And while it is not clear if the Taiwo babies were conceived with the help of a medical procedure, such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), their names indicate that they are from southwest Nigeria, a region that boasts one of the highest rates of twin and multiple births in the world.