BELLFLOWER, Calif. — Just think: eight cribs, eight highchairs, eight strollers (or maybe four double strollers) and far too many dirty diapers to count.
The octuplets born Monday night to a woman in Southern California were only the second set ever delivered alive in the United States.
Doctors said the six boys and two girls seemed to be doing remarkably well, despite being nine weeks premature. They ranged in weight from 1 pound, 8 ounces to 3 pounds, 4 ounces.
“We were fortunate that this patient was extremely strong, very courageous and able to handle these births,” said Dr. Karen Maples, chief of service for obstetrics and gynecology at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center, who delivered baby number eight.
No pictures of the children were released, and at the mother’s request, doctors declined to reveal her name, any information about her family or whether she took fertility drugs before becoming pregnant, though outside experts said it is almost certain she did.
The chances of conceiving eight babies naturally are “unbelievably rare,” said Richard Paulson, director of the fertility program at the University of Southern California.
The babies have not been named, but the staff has assigned them the letters A through H in the meantime. They were expected to remain hospitalized for several weeks and could face serious developmental problems later on because of their size.
“They are doing amazingly well at this time,” said Mandhir Gupta, a neonatologist who was part of the team of 46 doctors, nurses and others who took part in the cesarean-section delivery.
But he added: “I won’t be able to comment on chances of survival because we’ve never had eight babies born at 30 weeks before.”
The survival chances drop off sharply in multiple births, particularly if there are more than three babies. The risks include breathing and eating difficulties and growth problems because their lungs and other systems often are underdeveloped. They also may have hearing or vision problems and learning disabilities as they mature.
In fact, the risks in multiple births are so high that when a woman is pregnant with more than three babies, doctors routinely recommend aborting some of them.
The babies were still in incubators, and their mother had not been able to hold them yet. Three had oxygen tubes in their noses to help them breathe. The first four were expected to begin taking milk sometime Tuesday, and the others shortly after that.
“That’s the biggest test,” Gupta said. “We want to make sure that they start tolerating and digesting the milk.”
The woman and her doctors were expecting seven children, not eight. The delivery team was thinking the hard work was over after the seventh baby was removed from the womb, but then another physician spotted another little hand, Maples said.
The mother reacted calmly to the news, said anesthesiologist Jalil Riazi. “Her question was, ‘Really, an eighth baby? How did we miss that baby?’ ” he said.
The mother had checked into the hospital in her 23rd week and spent nearly two months working with doctors in preparing for the big day.
Mainly she got a lot of bed rest, Maples said, while the medical team repeatedly conducted practice sessions.
The first live U.S. octuplets were born in Houston in 1998. The tiniest died a week after the birth. The surviving siblings turned 10 in December and were reported by their mother to be doing well.
