Didn’t Wait Long Enough : He Had Vasectomy--and She’s Pregnant With Six

Kim Perham waited eight weeks for her husband to become sterile after his vasectomy, then thought, “We’ve waited our time. We’re OK.”

Today she’s pregnant with sextuplets.

“I’ll have eight babies that are under the age of 3,” said Perham, 27, already the mother of 2-year-old twin boys.

“He always wanted a girl,” she said of her husband. “Now he’s got girls.”

Four daughters, in fact, and two more sons are to be delivered by Caesarean section which has already been scheduled for July 28 at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Kim Perham said they waited eight weeks for her husband, Dick, to become sterile after the vasectomy. But Dick Perham skipped the usual doctor’s tests for sterility and assumed that the operation had been successful.

“I’d talked to all the guys at work and they said, ‘Eight to 10 weeks, no problem, don’t worry about it,’ ” he said. “None of them had any more kids. I guess I was the lucky one.”

Although Kim Perham was taking a hormone treatment, her husband said doctors attributed the multiple conceptions to pregnancies that occurred days apart.

The truth came out gradually. A doctor told Kim Perham in early January that there were four heartbeats. A while later she learned of a fifth, and last week an ultrasound test detected a sixth fetus.

Both Perhams say they are excited about the prospect of six more children but acknowledge that they struggled to meet expenses after the twins were born and are concerned about their finances.

Perham, 33, a diesel mechanic at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard here, has taken a second job working nights at a service station so the family can move into a bigger house.