Septuplets’ Mother Holds Biggest Baby, Meets Media

The weary mother of the only living septuplets in the world was overcome by emotion at a packed hospital news conference Friday when she spoke of getting to hold one of the newborns for the first time.

Kenneth Robert McCaughey was upgraded from serious to fair condition and removed from a ventilator after he began breathing on his own. He was nicknamed “Hercules” by doctors because he was lowest in the womb and held up the six others. He was also the strongest of the brood and the biggest at 3 pounds, 4 ounces.

“I never thought they would come off the ventilators so soon,” Bobbi McCaughey, 29, said as her husband, Kenny, held her hand. “It was just incredible. I can’t wait until I can hold all of them.”

“If we have the arms,” her husband added with a wide grin.

The three other boys and three girls remained in serious condition Friday and were all on ventilators, two days after they were delivered by caesarean section. Doctors expect them all to be breathing on their own within three days.

The hospital said the mother’s breast milk would be mixed with formula and given to the babies when they start eating.

She was tired from the ordeal. After 21 weeks of bed rest and more than a month in the hospital, she walked gingerly across the stage of the hospital in a blue quilted dressing gown, with her husband holding her hand and a nurse carrying her IV bag.

*

Bobbi McCaughey paused as photographers took pictures, smiling briefly before becoming choked with emotion, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

She spoke only briefly.

“She does appreciate the love and the care and concern, and the fact that we want to tell the world what has happened here in this little old Iowa where the tall corn grows, you know, and the babies do too,” Kenny McCaughey said. “It’s all a blessing from God.”

The father, wearing seven blue and pink bracelets on his wrists that allow him admittance to see the babies, said it was wonderful to hold his son Friday after all the visits to see the babies.

“It was just a little man, right there,” he said, showing how he held the infant in his two hands. “That’s my boy.”

The family has been showered with gifts, including a van with the names of the babies painted on the side, a year’s supply of groceries and a new house yet to be built.

On Friday, another benefactor offered to cover another big expense. Hannibal-LaGrange College, a 129-year-old Baptist institution in Missouri, offered full scholarships to any or all of the septuplets.

The school estimated the gift to be worth $300,000 in today’s dollars. The president of the 1,100-student school, Woodrow Burt, said the offer was extended because of the strong Christian beliefs expressed by the parents.

The McCaughey’s, staunch Baptists, rejected suggestions that they should selectively abort some of the septuplets early in the pregnancy to increase the survival chances of the others.

Earlier, Bobbi McCaughey told KCCI-TV that she had pressed on with her risky pregnancy because “they were my children and I wanted them.”

She said her decision to have all the babies was made partly because of her religious faith and partly that “these are babies. How can you decide that you’re going to have this one and you’re not going to have that one?”

The progress the septuplets have made so far is no guarantee they will overcome the developmental challenges that lie ahead, specialists say.

Babies born too soon often have underdeveloped lungs, weakened skin, weakened immune systems and immature blood vessels.

Any of these problems the babies may have should be evident before their predicted release from the hospital in January.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Seven’s a Crowd

Doctors reported Friday that Iowa’s “sensational seven” and their mother continued to do well and released a diagram of the babies’ positions in the womb before their birth by caesarean section.

Uterus

Amniotic sac containing fetus and umbilical cord

Cervix

1) Kenneth Robert

3 pounds, 4 ounces

2) Alexis May

2 pounds, 11 ounces

3) Natalie Sue

2 pounds, 10 ounces

4) Kelsey Ann

2 pounds, 5 ounces

5) Brandon James

3 pounds, 3 ounces

6) Nathaniel Roy

2 pounds, 14 ounces

7) Joel Steven

2 pounds, 15 ounces

Source: Dr. Paula Malone