Having a baby truly changes your life. As a new parent, you experience love you never knew you were capable of before. You also experience sleepless nights, hard work and stress as you strive to give you baby the best start at life possible.

One baby can be a lot of work. Having multiple children, can make life even more complicated. Having multiple children all at one, like in the case of a birth involving multiple babies, is something so complex we can hardly fathom what it must be like.

Abdelkader Arby is in the army in Mali. He and his wife, Halima Cisse, had one child, a daughter. Then, Cisse became pregnant again. She quickly found out that she was pregnant with multiple babies. At the time, she was told she was going to have 7 babies.

Unlike many births where multiple babies are born at once, Cisse’s pregnancy was not the result of in vitro fertilization. Her babies were conceived naturally.

Before it was time for Cisse to give birth, Mali sent Cisse and Arby to Morocco where they believed the babies would have a higher chance of survival.

The babies were born via C-section at just 30 weeks instead of the more typical 40 weeks. That means they were very premature; however, they were far enough along that it was possible for them to survive.

Cisse, Arby and everyone at the clinic where the babies were born were in for a big surprise. There weren’t seven babies. There were nine.

When two babies are born at the time time, they are called twins. Three babies are called triplets. Nine babies born at the time time are called nonuplets. There are only two other sets of nonuplet births have ever been recorded, but those babies only survived a few days. The team at the clinic was determined to make sure Cisse and Arby’s nonuplets survived and thrived.

Watch the video below to learn more about this amazing birth and to hear from Cisse and Arby about what it’s like to be parents to nonuplets.

The nonuplets and their parents have yet to return home to Mali, but when they do, it is expected to be a celebration. In the meantime, they have another very important milestone to celebrate. The babies just celebrated their first birthday. This is the first recorded case of nonuplet babies surviving and thriving an entire year.

Watch the video below for an update on how these nonuplets are doing now that they are officially 1 year old.