Abdelkader Arby and Halima Cissé, a couple from Mali, recently celebrated the fourth birthday of their nonuplets. The children hold the record for most children born at a single birth to survive.
Per the Guinness World Records (GWR), the parents also share the title of most children delivered at a single birth with Geraldine Brodrick (Australia) in 1971, although none of those children survived.
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After being born in Morocco, the nonuplets returned to Mali after they were 19 months old.
At first, doctors believed Halima was expecting seven children. It wasn’t until the Malian government transported her and Abdelkader to Morocco for treatment at a specialized clinic that the other two were found.
On May 4, Kadidia, Fatouma, Hawa, Adama, and Oumou celebrated their special day alongside brothers Mohammed VI, Elhadji, Oumar, and Bah.
Halima’s five daughters and four sons were delivered prematurely via C-section at 30 weeks gestation. An average pregnancy lasts around 40 weeks.
The newborns weighed between 0.5 and 1 kg (1.1 and 2.2 pounds). Because there had never been a documented instance of this many children from a single birth all surviving, their births were so unusual that they made headlines worldwide.
The risky nature of the birth, however, caused Halima and her children to remain in Morocco for so long.
They had to reside in a specially furnished apartment with a staff of nurses there to help as required.
The kids have an older sister, Arby, who is six years old.
The 29-year-old mom told GWR, “The children are all well, by the grace of God…They have grown so much since their last birthday and the change is clearly visible in them all…For their 4th birthday, we decided to celebrate in a grandiose way, as a celebrity would!”
Proud dad Abdelkader also previously told the BBC in 2022 ahead of the children’s first birthday, “They all have different characters. Some are quiet, while other make more noise and cry a lot. Some want to be picked up all the time. They are all very different, which is entirely normal.”
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