A Californian woman has shocked doctors by giving birth to octuplets.
She had been expecting seven children.
It is believed to be only the second set of eight babies born in the US.
The six boys and two girls are doing well and are in a stable condition in the neonatal intensive care unit, said Dr Karen Maples at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Bellflower.
But two still need some help to breathe with ventilators, she told a press conference.
The eight babies were born nine weeks prematurely by Caesarean section over a five-minute period, stunning a 46-member medical team that was expecting only seven babies.
They weigh between 1lb 8oz (680g) and 3lb 4oz (1.47kg) and doctors initially identified them by the letters A through H as they were born.
Dr Maples said she had been following the mother, who was not identified, since the first trimester of her pregnancy.
Citing patient confidentiality rules, the hospital declined to say whether the mother had become pregnant through fertility treatments, which can raise the likelihood of multiple births.
The mother plans to breastfeed all eight babies, her doctors said.
The last octuplets known to have survived in the US were born in Houston in 1998, in that case six girls and two boys. One of the babies, a girl, died one week after birth.
