Three girls and three boys, named Emma, Samantha, Olivia, John, Patrick and Connor, were born in less than eight minutes time with the help of a medical team to a couple in Pennsylvania.

The babies were born at Abington Memorial Hospital and were in a critical condition. Each one of them weighed about 2 pounds and was in hospital's neonatal intensive-care unit. Doctors at the hospital said that the babies were on breathing machines and were receiving nutrition intravenously, in addition to their mother's milk.

Mother of the sextuplets, Stacey Carey, 33, who is a teacher in the Centennial School District, said that she was surprised to know that she has given birth to six babies. She became pregnant after receiving fertility treatments and was hospitalized for about six weeks before the births. The couple also has a 16-month-old daughter, Julianna.

On Monday, doctors at the Abington Memorial Hospital said that the sextuplets are responding well to the treatment.

According to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, sextuplets are quite rare and out of the 4.2 million births in the United States in 2008, only 46 were quintuplets or larger multiples.