Posted on 01/26/2009 9:12:44 PM PST by JoeProBono
A California woman shocked doctors by giving birth on Monday to octuplets, believed to be only the second set of eight babies born in the United States. The six boys and two girls were doing well and were in stable condition in the neonatal intensive care unit, said Dr. Karen Maples at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Bellflower.
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
Just looking at her picture gives me heartburn. I only had one child and the last two months of the pregnancy were tough.
I can’t imagine eight children at once. God bless them in the days ahead.
LOL! I was drinking Maalox right out of the bottle with all three of my boys. Kept one by my bed, in my purse, by the couch. I called it my Ripple.
I don’t know how she was walking around. I’m surprised she was not on bed rest. It is a blessing the babies are all alive and kicking.
That’s funny!
Nancy Pelosi won’t be pleased with this.
Ripple! LOL I’m a Pepto-Bismol gal myself. :)
Being short and short-waisted, I was lucky to eat anything towards the end.
Per the article, she plans on breastfeeding all eight children. She’ll lose the weight realllllly fast.
It's just not Ripple without the bag.
Your file photo represents an extreme pregnancy indeed, but the buildings in the background tell me this is NOT in Bellflower, California which is adjacent to Long Beach, California where I grew up. That file photo has to be from an Asian source.
Those structures would not be allowed to be inhabited in Earthquake prone California period.
File Photo
from artical..
“The mother plans to breast feed all eight babies, her doctors said.”
God bless these children and let them grow up healthy! And let their parents retain their mental health! :)
The odds are greatly against all 8 children being completely healthy, so I hope they beat the odds. Even triplets have a greatly increased chance of all sorts of medical issues such as cerebral palsy, and a greatly increased infant mortality. I had twins, and even twins have greater mortality rates than singletons. I ended up basically on bed rest for the last couple of months of my pregnancy, and my docs kept me on a short leash, making me come in for weekly checks. A successful octuplet pregnancy is really, really beating the odds.
Forty-six hospital staff and four delivery rooms were used for the births. After a baby was born, staff rushed the newborn into another room and waited for the next, the hospital said. But despite weeks of preparation, doctors did not expect the eighth child.
“It is quite easy to miss a baby when you’re anticipating seven babies,” said Dr. Harold Henry, chief of maternal and fetal medicine at the hospital. “Ultrasound doesn’t show you everything.”
Dr. Richard Paulson, director of the fertility program at the USC Medical School, called the event “unbelievably rare. When people use fertility drugs, 80 percent even then are single births. The vast majority of the others are twins.”
Still, fertility experts consider the birth of more than two kids with fertility medication to be not a medical triumph, but “a serious complication,” Paulson said. “We do not ever intend to give someone octuplets.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.