Sonic Booms and Baby Boom : Lancaster Test Pilot and His Wife : Are New Parents of Quadruplets

U-2 test pilot Robert Rowe and his wife, Diane, both 39, were still hoping for a large family after seven years of marriage.

Monday they got one, as Diane Rowe gave birth to the first quadruplets born in the Antelope Valley.

“We always wanted a big family, but we just didn’t expect it to happen all at once,” she said after giving birth by caesarean section at Antelope Valley Hospital.

Sophie, Robert, Hannah and Lorraine were born eight months into the pregnancy and a minute apart, ranging in weight from 3 pounds, 4 ounces to 4 pounds, 6 ounces. Mother and children were in fine shape, doctors said.

Diane Rowe will be released in a few days. The babies will be held in a neonatal intensive-care unit for at least several days and perhaps as long as several weeks, a standard safety measure for newborns under 5 pounds, said hospital spokesman Gary Cothran.

“We feel very thankful after all we’ve been through,” said Diane Rowe, who had a miscarriage last year.

Rowe is a test pilot for Lockheed Martin, flying an updated version of the U-2, the spy plane in which Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960.

The Rowes, of Lancaster, employed in-vitro fertilization, in which eggs were removed and fertilized in a laboratory before being reimplanted in Diane Rowe. Such implants frequently fail to take, so multiple eggs are used. The Rowes’ doctor employed a fertilization technique in which the eggs are scratched to cause them to cling to the uterine wall, increasing the odds of survival--but also raising the odds that all four will grow, doctors said.

“That’s the chance you take when you put four eggs in the oven,” said Robert Rowe.

The procedure cost them $10,000, he said, and if it had not worked, they would have spent another $10,000 to try again.

Now they’ve got other expenses to worry about.

“We got a nursery set up at home and ready, but maybe we’ll hire a nurse to help out,” the father said. “We’re going to try our best to save for their college and provide love and a happy home.”

Dr. William Copeland, chief of staff at the hospital, delivered the children.