A Touching Moment for 5 Surviving Babies, Mom

Patti Frustaci visited her five remaining septuplets for the first time Saturday evening, touching and talking with the babies, some of whom “opened their eyes and seemed to respond to her touch,” Dr. Martin Feldman, her obstetrician, said Sunday.

“We felt it was important for her and her children to get together,” Feldman said. It would be a “catastrophe” if another one died before their mother got to see them, he said.

Calling the visit “sudden,” Feldman said Frustaci, 30, a Riverside high school teacher, also “wanted to see the children as soon as possible.” She was “much happier” afterward, he said.

The meeting between mother and babies was photographed by People magazine, which has signed a contract with the Frustacis for exclusive publicity rights.

The five critically ill babies remained stable Sunday, but all had improved slightly, said Dr. David Hicks, a neonatologist at Childrens Hospital of Orange County. He said Baby B remained the most critical, but had “made some progress overnight.”

Although the mother’s condition continued to improve, Feldman said, her release from nearby St. Joseph Hospital’s intensive care unit “will probably be delayed” until this morning because of fatigue, Feldman said. She could go home as early as Wednesday, he said.

Feldman said Frustaci’s condition was “good, with some discomfort and some minor problems.” He added, “Her recovery has been pretty much as we predicted.”

By Sunday morning, the weights of the five babies ranged from 1 pound, 8.5 ounces to 1 pound, 12 ounces, Hicks said.

The babies at first had received all of their their oxygen medically. By Sunday, that figure had decreased to between 26% and 60%. The percentage of oxygen given to Baby B, a boy, was reduced in stages overnight from 63% to 60%, Hicks said. The five still receive blood transfusions every other day, Hicks said.

Despite the complications, all five infants are “progressing as well as we would expect,” Hicks said. The hope that all will survive is bolstered “as each day goes by,” he said.

The septuplets were delivered by Caesarean section Tuesday morning at St. Joseph Hospital in their mother’s 28th week of pregnancy--about 12 weeks premature. She had taken fertility drugs.

One of the septuplets, a girl, died in the uterus. A boy, designated Baby F but nicknamed Peanut because he was smaller than the others, died Friday morning of cardio-respiratory failure.

As in all premature babies, lung problems are the most threatening, Hicks said. The bodily system that keeps the lungs expanded is not as developed in premature babies as with those who reach full term.

An apparently diminishing problem is jaundice, and Hicks said at least three of the babies have been taken off phototherapy treatments. None of the infants are showing liver problems, and their blood pressure is good, Hicks said.

Premature babies sometimes suffer birth defects that only show up later in life. But ultrasound scanning to detect bleeding or other brain problems found no malfunction in any of the five Frustaci babies, whose “neurological status looks very good at this point,” Hicks said.

The prognosis is “very hopeful, quite good for some of the babies (and) probably better than 50-50” for Baby B, Hicks said, although he stressed the uncertainty of any predictions.

Both Frustaci and her husband, Samuel, 32, plan to meet with reporters Tuesday morning, a hospital spokeswoman said. It will be the mother’s first such meeting since the births.

Feldman described Samuel Frustaci as “fatigued--it’s been a strain on his whole life.” Rosann Wilson, Samuel Frustaci’s sister, said she had spoken with him early Sunday and he was “very, very tired.

“He’s had a lot to deal with,” she said, and he is making funeral arrangements for the two dead babies.