IRISH TWINS WERE BORN 87 DAYS APART AND BROKE A RECORD
An Irish mom delivered twins 87 days apart, a gap that topped the previous known record.
Maria Jones-Elliott, then 34, gave birth to her daughter Amy prematurely on June 1, 2012, at Waterford Regional Hospital in Ireland. Amy’s twin sister, Katie, did not arrive until August 27, 2012, at the same hospital.
Amy came first and Katie second, with 87 days between them, the Daily Mirror reported. The sisters now have birthdays in different months.
The labour that stopped
Maria and her husband, Chris, lived in Glenmore, County Kilkenny, and were expecting twin girls. The family already had older children, Olivia and Jack, Extra.ie reported.
Amy arrived months ahead of schedule after Maria’s waters broke and a labour that dragged on for days. She weighed 1 lb 3 oz.
Then the contractions stopped, leaving Katie in the womb.
In a typical twin birth, contractions deliver both babies in quick succession, The Epoch Times reported. This time, the uterus simply stopped contracting once Amy was born.
Fox News reported that doctors tried to induce labour without success, and that Maria and Chris chose to wait and let Katie arrive naturally.
“Doctors were stunned; they’d never seen anything like it before,” Maria said.
Dr. Eddie O’Donnell called the case “extremely unusual” and “probably the first of its kind.”
What happened next
Katie was born on August 27, 2012, weighing 5 lb 10 oz. She went home within days, and both girls survived and later thrived, The Times of India reported.
Registering the births caused its own stir. Maria said the girls’ certificates list each of them with her own birth date, Amy’s in June and Katie’s in August.
A colleague at the birth-registration office reportedly sat with her mouth open and said she had never seen anything like it.
The previous record stood at 84 days, set by Pennsylvania twins Hanna and Eric Lynn, Fox News reported. The outlet added that Guinness World Records was looking into the Elliott case at the time.
The Times of India reported on September 11, 2026, that the twins hold the Guinness World Record for the longest interval between twin births.
