On 4th May 2026, in a home filled with noise and colour in Mali, nine children celebrated their fifth birthday together.
For Halima Sissé and Abdelkader Arbe, the milestone was another chapter in a story the world has been following since the day their children arrived; all nine of them, in a Casablanca operating room five years ago.
Khadidja, Fatuma, Hawa, Adama, Omo, Mohamed, Umar, Elhadji and Bah are the world’s only surviving nonuplets, and they hold a Guinness World Record to prove it. No other set of nine babies born at once has ever made it.
The family shared photographs from the birthday celebration, and messages of admiration flooded in from across the globe.
Their story began as a medical marvel. Halima gave birth at just 30 weeks of pregnancy via caesarean section, the babies arriving weeks before they were ready for the world.
Each of the nine weighed between half a kilogram and one kilogram. Doctors were uncertain whether all of them would survive.
For the next 19 months, the family remained in Morocco, where the infants received round-the-clock specialist care before finally returning home to Mali.
That they all not only survived but thrived has rewritten expectations around what is medically possible in multiple births.
Five years on, the nine are described by their mother as active, playful and deeply bonded with one another.
Now the family looks ahead to another landmark: the children’s first day of school. Halima described the approaching milestone as both important and exciting.
What strikes her most is how united the nine remain, they look out for each other, as children who have shared everything from birth tend to do.
Yet they are also unmistakably individuals. Their mother speaks of distinct personalities living side by side, some children spirited and energetic, others quiet and thoughtful.
In a family of nine, there is room for every kind of person. For Mali, the nonuplets have become a quiet source of national pride.
For medicine, they remain an extraordinary reference point, a case that expanded the boundaries of what premature multiple births can look like at their best.
And for their parents, each new stage of growth is simply the next chapter in a life that has never stopped surprising the world.
