Pictured all together for the first time, this is the world record-breaking NINE miracle babies born to the same mother – as the healthy brood prepare to go home.
Halima Cisse beams proudly with her nonuplets, five months after she made headlines around the globe when she gave birth at the Ain Borja clinic in Casablanca, Morocco, breaking the previous world record set by ‘Octomum’ Nadya Suleman in 2009, who gave birth to eight babies that survived.
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Ms Cisse, 26, said: ‘All of them are getting on very well, and are a joy to look after. They are getting stronger every day and it may well be they are allowed to leave full time medical care soon, so that we can take them home.’
Ms Cisse’s nine tots, who were conceived naturally, each weighed between 500gm to 1kg when they were born and had to remain in incubators in the clinic’s intensive care unit where they were looked after round the clock by a team of doctors and nurses for the first few months of their lives.
But now all nine have gained weight and continued to thrive meaning they can soon go back to their home country, Mali.
As the babies approach six months, Ms Cisse and her partner Kader Arby, 35, celebrated by releasing these touching new photographs showing them together as a group.
The new pictures show the boys – Oumar, Elhadji, Bah and Mohammed VI – in green romper suits bearing the word ‘Brother’ on them.
The girls – Adama, Oumou, Hawa, Kadidia, and Fatouma – meanwhile wear a mixture of pink and baby blue outfits.
All the Arby tots are Malian nationals, and they were last week visited by Djaminatou Sangare, the country’s Health Minister, who worked out how they could be safely flown to Bamako, the Malian capital, which is some two-and-a-half thousand miles from Casablanca.
The couple were originally told that Halima was carrying seven babies by doctors in Mali, who feared that there was a less than 50% chance that any of them would survive.
She spent two weeks in Point G Hospital in Bamako, Mali’s capital, before she was transferred to Morocco thanks to the intervention of Mali’s then President of Transition, Bah N’Daw.
This is why one of the boys is called Bah. Another is named Mohamed VI, in honour of the King of Morocco.
Kader, who is a devout Muslim, said: ‘My wife is an only child while I have eight brothers and sisters. There is nothing in our family history to explain how this happened other than Allah’s grace. These children are a gift from Him’.
In accordance with Islamic custom, the names of the newborns were revealed seven days after their birth.
The babies were born in the following order: Kadidia, 2kg840, Mohammed VI, 3kg315, Fatouma, 3kg130, Oumar, 2kg400, Hawa, 1kg585, Adama, 2kg720, Bah, 2kg900, Oumou, 2kg795, and El Hadji, 1kg870.
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Wow
This is so incredible
Lovely
God is great