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.
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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.
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“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.
“The team quickly assembled to begin prenatal management and delivery planning including pre-delivery drills and resuscitation exercises,” said Susan Lanni, M.D., medical director of labor and delivery and maternal-fetal specialist at VCU Medical Center, the hospital press release said. “A typical labor and delivery shift includes one, perhaps two premature births, usually with time in between. We had to coordinate with our colleagues in the NICU for six premature babies to be delivered simultaneously.”
The parents, who are not yet doing interviews with the media, were thrilled when they saw four heartbeats at their first ultrasound in November, according to the hospital.
“I was excited,” said Adeboye according to the press release. “For the very first time we were expecting…The medical team is excellent in medicine and hospitality. We are far from home but the medical team is our family. That is what got us this far.”
