On May 4, 2021, a medical team in Casablanca, Morocco, prepared for an extraordinary delivery.

Halima Cissé, a 25-year-old woman from Mali, was expecting an unusually large number of babies. Doctors in Mali had initially believed she was carrying seven. But when Cissé was transferred to Morocco for specialist treatment, doctors discovered something even more astonishing.

She was carrying nine babies—five girls and four boys.

A team of approximately 30 medical professionals prepared for the Caesarean delivery. The babies were born prematurely and immediately required specialized neonatal care.Their weights ranged from approximately 500 grams to 1 kilogram, meaning that some were small enough to fit in the palm of an adult’s hand.

The next several months were an enormous medical challenge. The newborns required incubators, respiratory support, feeding assistance, and constant monitoring as their organs developed.

Then came the extraordinary outcome. All nine survived.

Guinness World Records recognizes the children as the first known nonuplets to survive birth and infancy, making the Cissé family one of the most remarkable cases in the history of multiple births.