Last month, 25 year old Halima Cisse from Mali made the news when they gave birth to Nonuplets, a total of nine babies at once. However, Gosiame Thamara Sithole, a 37 year old woman from Gauteng South Africa; has broken Halima’s record as she just birthed Decuplets, a total of ten babies at once.
Gosiame Thamara Sithole, gave birth to her decuplets after she had two more babies than doctors had earlier detected during the medical scans; at a hospital in Pretoria, South Africa on Monday night according to her husband Teboho Tsotetsi.
He said Sithole, who hails from Tembisa Township in Ekurhuleni, delivered her seven boys and three girls by Caesarean section. Gosiame Sithole, who already has six-year-old twins, previously told the Pretoria News that her pregnancy was natural as she was not on fertility treatment. Speaking to the Pretoria News last night, Tsotetsi said Sithole gave birth to their bundles of joy 29 weeks into her pregnancy. It’s seven boys and three girls. She was seven months and seven days pregnant. I am happy, i am emotional. I can’t talk much. Let’s talk again in the morning please,” Tsotetsi said. In an interview at their family home in Tembisa last month and the publication of which was delayed at the request of the couple for safety and cultural reasons, Sithole said she was shocked and fascinated by the pregnancy.
Gosiame Sithole Was in a state of disbelief
She said she had been in a state of disbelief when the doctors told her earlier this year that she was expecting six children (sextuplets) before further scans showed that it was in fact octuplets. Two others could not be detected initially because they were inside the wrong tube, Sithole said. “I am shocked by my pregnancy. It was tough at the beginning. I was sick. It was hard for me. It’s still tough but I am used to it now. I don’t feel the pain anymore, but it’s still a bit tough, I just pray for God to help me deliver all my children in a healthy condition; and for me and my children to come out alive. I would be pleased about it,” Sithole said.
Professor Dini Mawela, the deputy head of the school of medicine at the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University; said Sithole’s case was rare and usually caused by fertility treatments.
The children would spend the next few months in the incubator because it was a; “high risk” pregnancy, Mawela said.
High Risk Pregnancy
“It’s quite a unique situation. I don’t know how often it happens. It’s extremely high risk (pregnancy). It’s a highly complex and high-risk situation. The danger is that, because there is not enough space in the womb for the children; the tendency is that they will be small. What would happen is that they would take them out pre-term because there is a risk if they keep them longer in there. The babies will come out small, chances of survival compromised. But all this depends on how long she carried them for.”
She said that the causes of such pregnancies were; “either nature, or somebody who was having fertility treatment”.
“Remember, when they do fertility treatment, they inject as many eggs as possible to increase the chances of conception because the assumption is that some of them would die. But they might all survive. So, I don’t know whether she conceived this naturally, which is possible, or whether this is a product of fertility treatment,” Mawela added.
Sithole has broken the record of the most children born at the same birth held by Cissé, who gave birth to nine children (nonuplets) at a hospital in Morocco last month.
Before Cissé, the record holder of the most children delivered at a single birth to survive was reportedly American Nadya Suleman, who gave birth to eight children in 2009. Her octuplets were conceived through in vitro fertilisation.
 at a hospital in Morocco last month.){kind=link}