Couple Tried To Conceive For 17 Years; Gives Birth To Sextuplets!

(Photo Credit: Allen Jones/VCU)

Yes, miracles still happen. A Nigerian couple who had been trying to conceive for 17 years had their miracle happen times six! The couple recently gave birth to three boys and three girls!

According to People.com, at 8:26 a.m. on May 11th, Ajibola Taiwo, a native of western Nigeria, gave birth to three boys and three girls via c-section, at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU. Her husband, Adeboye Taiwo, was right by her side.

Taiwo was 30 weeks and two days pregnant when she gave birth to the sextuplets. The babies ranged in weight from 1 pound, 10 ounces to 2 pounds, 15 ounces and are still in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit but doing well. Their mom was discharged May 18 but have been tirelessly helping to care for their infants.

Sextuplets can be fraternal (multizygotic), identical (monozygotic) or a combination of both, like the Taiwo’s. The first surviving set of sextuplets was born in South Africa in 1974. The first surviving set of sextuplets from the United States were the Dilley sextuplets born in 1993, often referred to as the “Dilley Six Pack.”

The Carpio sextuplets (born October 6, 2008 in the New York City borough of Queens) are the first Hispanic sextuplets to be born in America. It is not known if their parents, Victor and Digna Carpio, conceived using fertility treatments. The babies (Justin, Jadon, Jezreel, Danelia, Genesis, and Joel) were delivered by Caesarean section at 25 weeks.

On March 4, 2013 the first sextuplets in Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean were born at the Maternity Hospital of the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex at Mount Hope, Trinidad and Tobago to an anonymous Trinidadian couple. Two of them died a few weeks later.

(Photo Credit: Allen Jones/VCU)

“I hope for the smallest of my six children to grow up and say, ‘I was so small, and look at me now,’” said Ajibola Taiwo, according to the hospital’s press release. “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.”

It was the first sextuplet delivery in the history of the hospital, it said in the news release announcing their births. A 40-person team helped deliver the infants.