A 25-year-old woman from Mali safely delivered nine babies days ahead of Mother’s Day.

"The newborns (five girls and four boys) and the mother are all doing well," Mali's health minister Dr. Fanta Siby said in an announcement about the births, according to NPR.

Initially, Halima Cisse was believed to be pregnant with seven babies, or septuplets. News of her pregnancy drew national attention and ultimately inspired Bah N’Daw, Mali’s president, to send Cisse to Morocco for specialized care at the end of March. Last Tuesday, she gave birth to a total of nine babies, two more than expected, in the North African nation. 

Cisse’s children were delivered via Cesarean section at 30 weeks, 9 weeks premature. The children each weighed in at a mere 1.1-2.2 lbs. 

The 25-year-old’s husband, Adjudant Kader Arby, said he is overjoyed at the outcome and the support from his wife’s delivery.  

"Everybody called me! Everybody called! The Malian authorities called expressing their joy. I thank them. Even the president called me," he said to the BBC.

Arby remained in Mali with his and Cisse’s older daughter but is constantly in touch with his wife. 

He says that he is not concerned about their newborns’ well-being, relying on his trust in God to handle their safety. 

"God gave us these children. He is the one to decide what will happen to them. I'm not worried about that. When the almighty does something, He knows why," he said.

The Timbuktu native’s pregnancy was undoubtedly high-risk, with each child given a 50% chance of being stillborn. The astonishing safe delivery of the nonuplets may now hold a new Guinness World Record for “most children delivered at a single birth to survive.” 

Currently, Nadya Suleman of California, famously dubbed “Octomom,” holds the Guinness World Record after delivering eight babies in 2009. Although the children arrived safely, giving Suleman the world record title was controversial since she received in-vitro fertility (IVF) treatments. The octuplets were also delivered via C-section, 9 weeks premature.  

Ten doctors and 25 paramedics helped assist in Cisse’s delivery process, which Ain Borja clinic medical director Youseff Alaoui described as “extremely rare” and “exceptional." The babies are now set to be incubated for the next two to three months. 

As far as Alaoui knows, Cisse had not received fertility treatments for her pregnancy. 

Yacoub Khalaf, a professor of reproductive medicine at King’s College London, contends that the pregnancy would have been extraordinarily unlikely without fertility treatment, and reiterated the future risks involved with multiple births.

The mother “was at severe risk of losing her uterus or losing her life,” he said, according to the Associated Press. The babies “could suffer physical and mental handicaps. The risk of cerebral palsy is astronomically higher.” 

While mother and babies are recovering, a Guinness World Records representative told NPR that "we are yet to verify this as a record as the wellbeing of both the mother and babies are of top priority." The organization said they’ve hired a specialist consultant to review the case.

BBC reported that only two other cases of nonuplets have been documented. One in Australia in 1971 and another in Malaysia in 1999. In both cases, none of the babies survived beyond a few days.

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