Gosiame Thamara Sithole, a 37-year-old woman from South Africa , reportedly gave birth to the world’s first decuples – 10 babies from a single pregnancy. The first recorded case of decuplets is currently shrouded in mystery, as  ten days since the woman allegedly brought the 10 babies into the world, no one has seen either the mother or the newborns. All we have to go on at this point are media reports and statements made by the babies’ father and other relatives, all of which claim that Gosiame Thamara Sithole did in fact give birth to 10 babies – seven boys and three girls – at the end of a 29-week pregnancy. Apart from the suspicious absence of the mother, there are a few things that don’t really add up, though…

Photo: milicangueira/Pixabay

First of all, until the news of Sithole’s unprecedented decuplets birth was originally reported by Praetoria News, the woman and her husband claimed they were pregnant with eight babies. Originally, it was supposed to be six babies, but a follow-up ultrasound revealed two more fetuses that couldn’t be detected initially because they were inside the wrong tube. Two more were apparently hiding, as the finally tally was ten. Then there was the parents’ claims that they conceived the decuplets naturally, when births involving more than three babies are very rare and often the result of fertility treatments.

 

Gosiame Thamara Sithole, who hails from the Tembisa township, near Johannesburg, allegedly gave birth to her 10 babies at a hospital in Praetoria, Monday, June 7th, but no one has seen her or the newborns since. The South African government can’t even confirm if the birth of decuplets is real, and that’s a red flag in my book. “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,” the father, Teboho Tsotetsi, told Praetoria News.

 

At one point, it was rumored that Gosiame delivered the decuplets at the  Louis Pasteur Private Hospital in Praetoria, but that was recently debunked as a rumor, after the manager of the hospital issued a statement. “I’ve just verified and we don’t have the patient and we don’t have 10 babies – we’ve never delivered 10 babies at Louis Pasteur Hospital. I don’t know where the story came from but I can confirm that it is not true,” Eyewitness News reports.

 

Another local government department said earlier this week that it had no record of the babies’ births in any of the province’s hospitals. Ms Sithole, the mother of two 6-year-old twins, is nowhere to be found, and as time goes by, the mystery around her allegedly historic pregnancy deepens. If Gosiame Thamara Sithole is confirmed to have given birth to 10 babies, she will break the record set last month by 25-year-old Halima Cissé, who gave birth to nine babies at a clinic in Morocco. Before Cissé, the record for most number of live babies in a single birth was held by Nadia Suleyman, who birthed eight babies.