JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – A 37-year-old woman has given birth to 10 healthy babies in a South African hospital – a new world record. Scan...
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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – A 37-year-old woman has given birth to 10 healthy babies in a South African hospital – a new world record.
Scans earlier this year initially revealed that Gosiame Thamara Sithole, 37, was carrying six babies and subsequent examinations revealed two others – before the number rose to 10 in the delivery room of a Pretoria Hospital on Monday evening.
Sithole, of Tembisa township in Ekurhuleni, a neighbourhood of Johannesburg, delivered the babies by Caesarean section. The new arrivals add to her six-year-old twins.
The decuplets’ father Teboho Tsotetsi told Pretoria News: “It’s seven boys and three girls. She was seven months and seven days pregnant. I’m happy, I’m emotional.”
The newspaper did not say which hospital delivered the babies. Sithole breaks a record set only last month by a Malian woman Halima Cisse, who gave birth to nine children in a Moroccan hospital.
Previous to that, the Guinness Book of World Records said the record for most living births at once belonged to Nadya Suleman, an American woman who gave birth to eight babies in 2009.
Medical complications in multiple births often mean that some of the babies do not reach full term.
Professor Dini Mawela, the deputy head of the school of medicine at the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, said: “It’s quite a unique situation. It’s a highly complex and high-risk situation. The danger is that, because there is not enough space in the womb for the children, the tendency is that they will be small.
“They probably took them out pre-term because there is a risk if they keep them longer in there.”
Sithole, of Tembisa township in Ekurhuleni, a neighbourhood of Johannesburg, delivered the babies by Caesarean section. The new arrivals add to her six-year-old twins.
The decuplets’ father Teboho Tsotetsi told Pretoria News: “It’s seven boys and three girls. She was seven months and seven days pregnant. I’m happy, I’m emotional.”
The newspaper did not say which hospital delivered the babies. Sithole breaks a record set only last month by a Malian woman Halima Cisse, who gave birth to nine children in a Moroccan hospital.
Previous to that, the Guinness Book of World Records said the record for most living births at once belonged to Nadya Suleman, an American woman who gave birth to eight babies in 2009.
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| The Mother of Ten, Gosiame Thamara Sithole |
Professor Dini Mawela, the deputy head of the school of medicine at the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, said: “It’s quite a unique situation. It’s a highly complex and high-risk situation. The danger is that, because there is not enough space in the womb for the children, the tendency is that they will be small.
“They probably took them out pre-term because there is a risk if they keep them longer in there.”
She said she was in disbelief when the doctors told her she was expecting sextuplets - meaning six babies - before further scans revealed that it was in fact octuplets or eight babies.
"I didn’t believe it, I doubted it, I was convinced that if it was more, it would be twins or triplets, not more than that.
"When the doctor told me, I took time to believe it, even when I saw the scans I didn't believe it. But, as time went by, I realised it was indeed true. I battled to sleep at night though," she said.
The 37-year-old mum said that she was worried about her babies' well-being but she was over the moon and looking forward to meeting her children.
"How would they fit in the womb? Would they survive? "What if they came out conjoined at the head, in the stomachs or hands? Like, what would happen?
"I asked myself all these questions until the doctor assured me that my womb was starting to expand inside. - Online Sources
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