Eight babies born Monday breath on their own · 2009-01-28 14:34
One day after a California woman gave birth to octuplets, doctors said on Tuesday that all eight babies were doing well and breathing on their own.
The woman was also said to be doing well, Reuters informs.
The six boys and two girls, born nine weeks prematurely, are only the second set of octuplets known to have survived birth in the United States.
"They still need some support with oxygen but only through the nose so most of the work of breathing is done by themselves," Dr. Mandhir Gupta told reporters.
A second test for the newborns is feeding.
The mother, whose name has been withheld by the hospital at her request, intended to breast feed all of her babies. But she has not yet been able to hold them because they were still in incubators in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, Gupta said.
The hospital has declined to say whether the woman became pregnant through fertility treatments, which can raise the likelihood of multiple births.
Meanwhile, according to Los Angeles Times, the chances that the eight babies born Monday were conceived naturally are infinitesimal, infertility specialists and doctors in maternal-fetal medicine say.
• Dirty Dancer wins prestigious award for classical ballet
• Paris is celebrating haute couture
|