Defying staggering odds of one in 4.7 billion, a young woman has welcomed sextuplets at the District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital in Rawalpindi, Punjab province on Friday.

According to the report of private TV channel Geo, overjoyed parents, Zeenat Bibi and Waheed from Hazara Colony, are celebrating the extraordinary arrival of their sextuplets — comprising four boys and two girls.

Medical professionals have confirmed that the newborns, who are in excellent health, have normal birth weights, and Zeenat is recovering well post-delivery.

The sextuplets will remain under medical supervision in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (ICU) until they are deemed fit to be discharged.

While sextuplets are rare occurrences, the use of fertility treatments has slightly elevated the chances of such multiple births. However, many physicians advise caution against relying on these methods.

Sextuplets can be classified into two types: fraternal and identical. Fraternal sextuplets originate from six distinct egg and sperm combinations, whereas identical sextuplets result from a single fertilized egg dividing into multiple embryos, as explained by verywellfamily.com.

On rare occasions, this splitting process can happen more than once, leading to identical triplets or sextuplets, though confirmed instances of the latter are scarce. Additionally, within a set of sextuplets, there can be pairs of identical twins.

Sextuplets may all be of the same gender, all girls, all boys, or a combination of both. Identical multiples will always be of the same gender.

Despite the joyous occasion, the family faces significant challenges ahead, as caring for a single newborn is demanding, let alone six.