A woman in the US has given birth to sextuplets in just over a three-minute period through Caesarean section.
Heather Carroll, 30, of Dallas County, Texas, had spent weeks in a hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, waiting for the birth.
More than 50 medical professionals at Brookwood Medical Center helped in the delivery of the five girls and one boy, who were described as healthy and ranging in weight from 1lbs 10oz to 2lbs 5oz.
According to the Birmingham News, her husband Mitchell, who had to wear six ID bracelets to visit his newborns, said that he was ‘on top of the world’.
“Everything this morning was perfect,” the Daily Mail quoted him as saying.
The Carroll household more than doubled in size with the successful births of the six babies, as the couple now have nine children.
Hospital staff were so prepared for the birth that they had performed six formal run-throughs and each baby had its own care team for the delivery.
Heather was around 28 weeks pregnant when she gave birth to the babies, who were labelled with the letters ‘a’ to ‘f’, around 12 weeks early.
They all came out crying and breathing by themselves, although they did require help in the delivery room and are on ventilators at the moment, a hospital neonatologist said.
Heather is the second woman in the U.S. to give birth to sextuplets this month, after Stacey Carey gave birth to six children in Abington, Pennsylvania, around two weeks ago.