This Might Be the World's First Birth of Decuplets

Guinness investigating claim of 10-baby birth in South Africa
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 10, 2021 2:30 PM CDT
This Might Be the World's First Birth of Decuplets
Keep 'em coming.   (Getty/vrabelpeter1)

You know it's been an eventful day in the delivery room when Guinness World Records tells the BBC it is investigating. The reason? Just one month after a woman from Mali gave birth to nonuplets, or nine children at once, a South African woman claims to have one-upped her. If confirmed, these decuplets would be a world record. "It's seven boys and three girls," husband Teboho Tsotetsi tells Pretoria News. “I am happy. I am emotional. I can’t talk much." The couple were told earlier this year that 37-year-old Gosiame Thamara Sithole was carrying six children, but the figure was soon revised to eight. The couple were expecting octuplets right up until this week's deliveries in a Pretoria hospital.

The pair also have 6-year-old twins, and they say were not undergoing fertility treatments before the latest pregnancy. A family member tells the BBC that five of the children were delivered naturally and five via caesarean section. In an earlier interview with Pretoria News, Sithole says she was initially worried about the outcome. "How would they fit in the womb? Would they survive?" she recalls wondering. Doctors, however, explained that her womb was expanding to accommodate the babies. She delivered at 29 weeks. (More childbirth stories.)

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