‘Test-Tube’ Quintuplets Doing Well--Miraculously

--”This is a miracle,” said Dr. Lenny Hutton, the Farmington Hills, Mich., gynecologist who delivered what are believed to be the nation’s first quintuplets conceived through in vitro fertilization. Michele L’Esperance, 34, of Clarkston, Mich., gave birth to the four girls and a boy by Caesarean section a minute apart Monday night at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich. All the babies were said to be doing well, although hospital spokeswoman Deb Mero did not release an official condition report on them. Two of the babies were having “respiratory distress” and were receiving oxygen, Mero said. She declined to provide further details. L’Esperance has two children by a previous marriage and her husband, Raymond, 27, has one child by a previous marriage. The quintuplets ranged in weight from 1 pound, 14 1/2 ounces to 3 pounds, 2 1/2 ounces. A London woman gave birth to five “test-tube” babies in March, 1986.

--Even subzero temperatures last week could not keep Milton (Mick) Anderson from his annual tradition of walking enough miles to match his age during the week before his birthday. Anderson, 74, said it took him six days to make the annual walk. “The walk was easy for me, but the weather was bad. I knew it was going to be cold, though, so I bought special clothes.” Anderson walked near his home in Hills, Minn. “I learned I needed to have a face mask and two coats--one with an Eskimo hood. I wore long underwear, woolen pants and insulated foot gear,” he said. The tradition started when Anderson was 55 and concerned because he was out of shape. “I walked up a flight of stairs and couldn’t catch my breath,” he said. “I’m sure I’d be dead by now if I hadn’t started exercising.” Anderson also lifts weights, walks a treadmill, bowls and rides a stationary bicycle.

--Princess Diana did not always have such a glamorous job. The Princess of Wales said she was a part-time cleaning woman before she met her husband, Prince Charles. Planting a tree to inaugurate a charity for children with leukemia, she nodded at theatrical producer Lucinda Craig Harvey, a trustee of the charity, and said: “I used to char (clean) for this lady.” Harvey explained: “She (Diana) was my cleaning lady for a year. I shared a flat with her sister Sarah . . . in 1979 or 1980. She came in the afternoons when she was working in the school in the morning. She was very good.” Diana worked as a kindergarten teacher in London and was virtually unknown to the public until a year before her marriage to Charles in 1981.