Rabat – The Guinness book just registered a new record on Monday night after Gosiame Thamara Sithole, a South African woman from Gauteng, gave birth to ten babies at once.
The mother delivered her babies by Cesarean on Monday night in a hospital in Pretoria. The record beats Maliam Halime Cisse, the Malian woman who gave birth to 9 children in Morocco last April.
According to husband Teboho Tsotetsi, Sithole gave birth to the babies 29 weeks into the pregnancy, equivalent to 7 months and seven days.
In an interview with Pretoria News, the father said he felt very “happy” and “emotional.”
Read also: Malian Woman Gives Birth to Nine Children in Moroccan Hospital
Gosiame Thamara Sithole, aged 37, told the New York Post that she had done medical scans and thought she was expecting eight babies.
To the family’s surprise, she gave birth to ten healthy babies, seven boys, and three girls.
In an interview with Pretoria News, the young mother said she didn’t believe what the doctors told her about her pregnancy at first.
“I was convinced that if it were more, it would be twins or triplets, not more than that. When the doctor told me, I took time to believe it,” she said.
She added that she did not undergo any fertility treatments such as In vitro fertilization (IVF) and that her pregnancy was completely natural.
Sithole also recounts being preoccupied with the health of her babies. She was worried they would suffer from deformities or die while in her womb.
Pr. Dini Mawela, the deputy head of the school of medicine at the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University, said that this pregnancy case was rare and odd and usually only occurs following fertility treatments.
Sithole and her husband said that they are happy to have been blessed with ten healthy babies. They are now officially on the Guinness book of records for the highest number of babies born in a single birth.
