Ajibola and Adeboye Taiwo's wish to have a baby went unanswered for 17 years. Then they welcomed six babies in a single day.

Ajibola, of West Nigeria, gave birth to three boys and three girls on the morning of May 11 with the help of a 40-person team at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond, Va.

The remarkable birth marked the end of a long road. The couple first learned their wait was over in November after an ultrasound found four heartbeats. Two months later, they discovered they would have six children.

"I was excited," Adeboye said. "For the very first time we were expecting."

The prospect of six premature babies arriving at once prompted the hospital to plan and simulate the busy day. It required experts across the medical spectrum from nurses to labor and delivery specialists and chaplains.

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The team ran pre-delivery drills and resuscitation exercises to prepare.

"A typical labor and delivery shift includes one, perhaps two premature births, usually with time in between," said Dr. Susan Lanni, the facility's medical director of labor and delivery and maternal-fetal specialist.

"We had to coordinate with our colleagues in the NICU for six premature babies to be delivered simultaneously."

The newborns were born by C-section, ranging in weight from 1 pound, 10 ounces, to 2 pounds, 15 ounces. Ajibola was 30 weeks and two days pregnant when she gave birth.

The babies are "doing well," the hospital said in a statement. They remain at the Children's Hospital of Richmond, where the couple helps care for the kids. The hospital said the family and the facility would not provide any more information on the birth.

Dr. Russell Moores, the medical director of the Children Hospital of Richmond's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit called the delivery "an amazing medical accomplishment that would not be possible without the outstanding coordination of our obstetrics and neonatal teams."

The Taiwos are the first to give birth to sextuplets at the hospitals. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 4 million live births last year. Just 24 were quintuplets or more.

Dad was happy with the family's treatment.

"We are far from home but the medical team is our family," Adeboye said. "That is what got us this far."

Ajibola's desire is for her children to pay it all forward.

"I hope for the smallest of my six children to grow up and say, 'I was so small, and look at me now,'" she said. "I want my kids (to) come back to VCU and study and learn to care for others with the same people who cared for me and my family."

Follow Sean Rossman on Twitter: @SeanRossman