Kacey Cairns had the shock of her life when she gave birth expecting a bonnie boy and out popped pretty little Aliyah Hussain.

Five generations of women have celebrated after the birth of a great-great-granddaughter – expected to be a little boy.

Baby Aliyah, Kacey, 19, Shari Cairns, 35, Doreen Cairns, 57 and Dorothy Baston, 85, make up the quintet and were all born in the Medway Towns.

New great-grandmother Doreen said: “I got a call from Kacey to say she’d had the baby – and it was a girl. She was screaming down the phone and I was screaming with joy, too. I am a bit over-dramatic but I was so pleased.

“Kacey had two scans, one just three weeks before the birth, both confirming the sex as a boy.

"We went on a mission and within 24 hours everything went from blue to pink" - Doreen Cairns

“We were all hoping for a girl initially to carry on the generations of women in the family, but geared ourselves up for a boy.

“So we’d bought everything in, prams, clothing, decorations for the bedroom. Then we got the news and it was fabulous.

"Meant to be, but such a shock. We went on a mission and within 24 hours everything went from blue to pink.

"Mothercare were brilliant, they swapped the pram and a number of other things straight away without any fuss.”

All of the generations were born in Gillingham or Chatham, and apart from Doreen, who works as a patient relations co-ordinator at Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital and lives in Reading, they all now live in Chatham.

Shari also has other children, Faith, nine, and Millie, seven, while Doreen has two boys, Chea, 25, and Asa, 38.

She added: “We’re all very close, we meet up every few months for dinner. We obviously had a big get-together to celebrate Aliyah’s birth.

“It’s lovely for my mum Dorothy to be a part of five generations. It doesn’t happen very often, and to have five of the same sex is even rarer.”

Kacey is heading to college in September to study to become a veterinary nurse.

Doreen said: “She’s looking forward to starting her course. Hopefully she will have more children, but she’s still quite young and keen to get her career off the ground.”