Thread: Quintuplets born in oregon w/o fertility drugs. Interesting story..

Thought this was an interesting story....

Stuggles lie ahead for quints

OHSU - A Grants Pass mom gives birth to five babies -- three girls, two boys -- each at about 1.5 pounds


Friday, May 12, 2006 ANDY DWORKIN

A woman from Grants Pass has given birth to quintuplets in OHSU Hospital, an event so rare it may be only the third such delivery in Oregon.
Rhonda Ford, 26, delivered three girls and two boys by Caesarean section Wednesday night. The babies are fragile, born at just over 25 weeks' gestation and weighing about 1.5 pounds each.
At that age, they face a tough medical road. All will probably be in intensive care for months, and have a significant chance of dying or developing serious disabilities.
But the mother and babies are doing better than expected, Oregon Health & Science University officials said. The family was not available to talk Thursday, but the father -- 26-year-old short-haul trucker Chris Ford -- and doctors have scheduled a news conference this morning to discuss the birth.
The babies, born four days before Mother's Day, have one older brother: 4-year-old Jacob.
Quintuplets are so rare, the exact chance of having five babies isn't quite clear. In 2003, the most recent year available, 85 of the roughly 4 million U.S. births involved quintuplets or more babies, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Ford quints are even more unusual in that the parents say they were not using fertility-boosting drugs. A 2000 CDC study estimates that less than 20 percent of triplets and larger multiple births happened without fertility drugs.
Doctors don't yet know whether any of the same-sex Ford quints are identical or whether five separate eggs were fertilized.
A January ultrasound -- displayed on their www.fordquintuplets.com Web site -- first told the Fords they were expecting quintuplets. Carrying so many babies brings a high risk for premature birth, low birth weight and other problems. So Rhonda, a homemaker, has been in OHSU since mid-March. Chris and Jacob have been staying in Portland, their Web site says.
The Fords were hoping the babies would not be born until mid-June, at the earliest. That would be 30 weeks' gestation, still two months short of normal delivery. But doctors decided they had to deliver the five Wednesday, at just 25 weeks and two days. The babies were born between 10:39 p.m. and 10:41 p.m., all weighing between 1.42 pounds and 1.65 pounds.
Studies estimate that 25 percent to 40 percent of babies born in their 25th week die. Of the babies that survive, about 25 percent will have extremely serious problems, including severe cerebral palsy, mental retardation, blindness or deafness.
Another 25 percent or so will have moderate disabilities that could require special schooling or other assistance, said Dr. Linda Wallen, medical director of Doernbecher Neonatal Care Center. Each of the babies faces about the same odds, she said, so some could thrive while others struggle.
"They have a really high chance of one of these babies not surviving, just statistically," she said.
As of Thursday afternoon, Wallen said she had not seen the Ford quints and didn't know their exact status. But babies born at this age are always placed in incubators, fed through a tube and almost always given help breathing. Wallen hopes the preemies will be off respirators or other breathing assistance in five to six weeks.
By the second or third day of life, doctors try to give such babies a few teaspoons of mother's milk. And they let the parents hold and comfort the infants as soon as they are stable, she said. Ideally, the babies could go home in several months.
What home they can go to is unclear. The Fords' Web site says the family lives in a small two-bedroom mobile home. They are hoping to move into a four- to six-bedroom home, and are seeking donations for that move and other expenses.
The couple first met in middle school and attended Grants Pass High School together, their Web site says: "After going their separate ways, they met again in 2001, fell in love, and soon were married."
The Fords are the second family to have quints at OHSU, after another set delivered in the 1980s, hospital officials say. In 1973, Clark County resident Karen Anderson delivered quintuplets at Portland's Bess Kaiser Hospital. Those babies, delivered vaginally two months early, all weighed more than 2 pounds. One, baby Diane, needed to be resuscitated and had heart surgery at 9 months old. But Audrey, Diane, Owen, Roger and Scott all grew up healthy and normal.