The story of a set of twins from Waterford, Ireland  born 87 days apart may now be heading for a new world record in the record books.

Today Amy and Katie are healthy twin girls, but there was a time when Mum Maria Jones-Elliot wasn’t sure if either of her twin daughters would make it.

“The doctors told me there was very little hope of them surviving as they were so premature,” she told newspapers when her water broke at just 23 weeks into the pregnancy.

Despite the odds, Amy was born on June 1, 2012. Four months premature and weighed a little more than a pound.  “Amy was fighting for her life in an incubator and Katie was struggling to survive in my womb,” Mum Maria told The Mirror.  Doctors induced Mum Maria a second time on August 27th which was during her 36th week of pregnancy. After about an hour, second twin Katie emerged.

“For a baby born at 23 weeks to survive is a huge achievement from everyone’s point of view,” Dr. Sam Coulter Smith, chief of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital and an expert in obstetrics and gynecology, told the Irish Times. “For a 23-week twin to survive is even bigger because twins often behave more prematurely than singleton babies. That really is right at the absolute border of viability.”

So this could be a new world record as the current record holder is Peggy Lynn from Huntingdon.  She reportedly gave birth to daughter Hanna and son Eric 84 days apart between 1995 and 1996.