Baby ‘Peanut’ Dies, Other 5 Remain Stable

After struggling for 64 hours against lung and heart problems, “Peanut,” the tiniest of the six Frustaci septuplets to survive delivery, died early Friday morning after one last fight for his life.

The boy, weighing about one pound, went into respiratory distress about 7 p.m. Thursday. Doctors were able to resuscitate him, but he survived only until 12:34 a.m. Friday, when he died of heart and lung failure, hospital officials said.

“Even though he was a tiny tot and he was here for only a short time, he was able to bring into the world a spirit about him and a love about him that I don’t think anyone will be able to forget,” the baby’s father, Samuel Frustaci of Riverside, told reporters in a choked voice and with tears in his eyes.

“It is a sad day, but yet we have to be grateful that we still have five living.”

Others Remain Critical

The surviving three boys and two girls remained in critical but stable condition Friday at Childrens Hospital of Orange County in Orange.

The mother, Patti Frustaci, 30, a schoolteacher who had taken fertility drugs, delivered four boys and three girls between 8:19 a.m. and 8:22 a.m. Tuesday by Caesarean section. The last, a girl, was stillborn. The babies were 12 weeks premature.

Patti Frustaci was described Friday as distraught over the death and “medicated.” She slept little the previous night and remained in the intensive care unit of St. Joseph Hospital, adjacent to Childrens Hospital. Although she has not been permitted to visit the babies, she held the body of the dead infant for about an hour after his death.

“Afterwards, she said, ‘Yes indeed, I did check my baby. The first thing I did was unwrap it,’ ” said Tes Pane, director of obstetrical, gynecological and neonatal nursing at St. Joseph.

“She said, ‘I held the baby. I just looked at it. . . . The first thing I looked at was the baby’s fingers and toes.’ And she looked at me and said, ‘They were perfect,’ ” Pane reported.

“The hardest thing for Patti is the fact that she never got the chance to see him (Peanut) while he was living,” Samuel Frustaci said Friday morning. “That’s the sad thing. So she needs to be strong. But we must concentrate on the other five . . . so she will be able to have some time with them.”

The infant was officially designated as Baby F, but got the nickname Peanut because of his small size. Samuel Frustaci said there will be a single funeral service for Peanut and his stillborn sister.

Final Fight

The baby’s final fight for life was described to reporters by Dr. Carrie Worcester, director of the neonatal intensive care unit at Childrens Hospital.

Worcester said that from the beginning Peanut “was different” from the other babies. After the delivery, his umbilical cord was examined and found to be “almost non-existent. Had this baby been in utero one more day, it too would have been a stillborn. This baby was a fighter.”

Worcester said that about 7 p.m. Thursday Peanut developed a pneumothorax, which she described as a leak between the lung and the chest wall. Resuscitation efforts, performed by Dr. Ralph Rucker, lasted about 40 minutes and included chest compression and medication, she said.

But even after he was revived, “he never returned to normal,” she said. His lungs were so “stiff and underdeveloped” they could not respond, but the staff “kept up the effort until the very end.”

“We are feeling some grief today because of the loss of this baby,” Worcester said. “But we know we have to get our energy back in the next few hours. We’ve got five babies--five Frustaci babies--and a lot of other babies who need our spirit and our energy.”

Severe Lung Disease

Babies A and E are doing the best, Babies B and D are the weakest and Baby C falls between the two extremes, she said. They all suffer from “severe, very severe” lung disease called hyaline membrane disease and are on respirators.

Hyaline membrane disease is common among premature infants and makes the lungs tend to collapse after each breath because they lack a lubricating substance that keeps the air sacs open.

Worcester said the disease reaches its peak at 72 hours, so she is not surprised that the five surviving babies made no major improvements since Thursday.

“These small babies often go on for weeks and months with ventilator support,” she said.

The babies also suffer from jaundice, which occurs when immature livers are unable to filter out toxins, but Worcester stressed that the condition is not serious.

Ultrasound tests to determine whether there is any bleeding in the brains of the children were negative, Worcester said. In addition, medication has successfully closed openings in a duct connecting each baby’s aorta and pulmonary artery, she said.

‘Get These Feelings’

Samuel Frustaci told reporters he knew something was wrong with Peanut Thursday night when he was making his last visit of the day in the neonatal unit.

“They wouldn’t let me see him,” he said, his voice breaking as he recalled the moment. “You get these feelings,” although the nurses told him nothing was wrong. The doctors, however, filled him in after they resuscitated the infant.

“But we have to be realistic in a situation like this. We knew it would be just a matter of hours before he would actually pass on,” he said.

“(It’s) circumstances like this that bring families closer together, and as one contemplates the effect of what Baby F has meant we can’t really mourn too much his death because of the joy he brought to all of us.”

The family knew from the start “that Peanut was going to be having a struggle because he was so small, that looking at Baby G (the stillborn) in the same position, we knew it was going to be a fight,” the father said.

“Peanut surprised a lot of people. We didn’t expect him to have 24 hours and he lasted 60,” he said.

“When the doctors came (Thursday evening) and they thought it was all over, they said, ‘There’s something about this kid that he’s really got to fight, that he’s made of steel, that he refuses to die,’ ”

Hospital spokesmen delayed relaying news of the infant’s death until about 9 a.m., out of respect for the family, they said. Samuel Frustaci had requested that he announce the death of his son, said Doug Wood, hospital spokesman.

Contributing to this story was Times staff writer Kim Murphy