While the government is up at night sweating over low birth rates, one local power couple, Luke and Lay Hui, said “hold my kopi” and single-handedly carried Singapore’s Total Fertility Rate on their backs.

In a country where most parents sweat over raising just one kid, this couple went all-out and raised nine.

The Masterplan (Or Lack Thereof)

1. The Prophet-Level Dining Table

Before they even had a squad of children running around, husband Luke (an interventional radiologist) went out and insisted on buying a massive, 10-seater round dining table.

Talk about manifestation! Either the guy had a secret crystal ball, or he was low-key planning to assemble his own 11-a-side football team right from the start.

2. A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I: The Creative Naming System

When you have nine kids, coming up with unique, meaningful names becomes an absolute brain drain.

So what did they do? They went full alphabetical order.

• Kid #1 started with ‘A’ (Amanda).
• From there, nature took its course all the way down the alphabet.

Thank goodness they stopped at nine. Imagine if they had 17 more—the last kid would literally be named Zebra.

Survival Tactics: Raising a Mini Battalion in Singapore

How do you keep a household of 11 people functioning without going broke or insane? Hardcore efficiency and extreme budgeting.

The Unofficial Grab Driver

Mommy Lay Hui (a full-time housewife and ultimate MVP) spends her days running a 24/7 shuttle service. Between driving the younger ones to school, picking them up from the MRT station, doing endless loads of laundry, and managing household chores, her schedule makes actual Grab drivers look like they’re on vacation.

Hardcore Textbook Recycling

Assessment books in Singapore are expensive, but Lay Hui unlocked the ultimate money-saving life hack: kids are strictly forbidden from writing inside the textbooks.

All working must be done on rough paper. That way, one single book can be passed down eight times like an ancient, sacred family heirloom. By the time Child #9 gets the book, it’s probably older than the Downtown Line.

Power-Chope at Church

Forget leaving tissue paper packets on hawker center tables. When this 11-person unit rolls into church on Sunday mornings, their sheer physical volume auto-chopes an entire row of pews on the spot.

GovTech’s No. 1 Superusers

Managing 9 birth certificates, Child Development Accounts, and National Service enlistments is an administrative nightmare. Enter the government’s LifeSG app.

Luke and Lay Hui used the app so heavily to manage their kids’ paperwork—including tracking their eldest boys off to NS—that GovTech featured them for their 10th anniversary! The app’s servers probably sweat a little every time Lay Hui logs in.

They Aren’t The Only Ones Building an Army!

Believe it or not, Luke and Lay Hui aren’t the only ones playing real-life Cheaper by the Dozen on our tiny island. A few other legendary Singaporean families are also operating at full battalion strength:

• The See Family (8 Kids): Living on a single income without a helper, private car, or tuition classes, this family turned household budgeting into a fine art. Instead of tuition centres, their nights are filled with epic, high-stakes board game battles.
• The Png Family (7 Kids): Both parents are doctors who run a household of nine. Their living room is a glorious, organized chaos of teenagers juggling homework while toddlers run wild—and their dinner logistics basically require military-grade catering precision.
• The Lim Family (7 Kids): When they welcomed their seventh child—a baby girl born with Down Syndrome—the entire household rallied together. With grandparents in the mix too, they prove that a massive family support network makes light work of big chaos.

“The Joy is Times Nine”

Despite all the madness, Luke and Lay Hui wouldn’t trade it for the world. Lay Hui shared that whenever even one child isn’t home, the house suddenly feels eerily quiet—like a ghost town.

Sure, the laundry mountain never disappears, and the noise level can blow off an HDB roof, but at the end of the day, their philosophy is simple: life is tiring, totally chaotic, but the joy is literally multiplied by nine.

Absolute respect lah!

---

Enjoyed this post? Here’s the absolute best of what we’ve ever published.

☕ Kopi Kaki Classics: Our Top 10 All-Time Hits 🏆

Out of all the posts we ever wrote, these 10 are the absolute champions. The whole kopitiam read already—now your turn.