Final Tally for Houston Woman is 6 Girls, 2 Boys

A 27-year-old woman on Sunday became the mother of the only known living set of octuplets, giving birth to five girls and two boys. Another child, a girl, was born Dec. 8.

All eight were in critical condition Sunday, with the smallest weighing 11 ounces and the largest weighing 1 pound, 11 ounces.

Nkem Chukwu, who had taken fertility drugs, gave birth to seven of the children by caesarean section about 9 a.m.

Until the first child was born 12 days earlier, doctors were unsure how many fetuses Chukwu was carrying, because her uterus was so crowded, said Dr. Brian Kirshon, a specialist in high-risk births, who was among three doctors who delivered the children at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital.

The first girl was about 12 weeks premature, and the others were 10 weeks early.

“It will be a remarkable feat if all the babies do survive,” said Kirshon. The babies were immediately taken to the adjacent Texas Children’s Hospital. All are on ventilators.

Leonard Weisman, the hospital’s chief neonatal specialist, said potential lung and heart problems are the immediate worries. After that, metabolic problems and infections are a danger.

“They’re doing as well as could be expected,” said Dr. Patti Savrick, a pediatrician at Texas Children’s. “They’re hanging in there.” It will be at least two months before the babies could be released.

Chukwu was in stable condition, Kirshon said. She entered the hospital in early October and has been confined to bed for six weeks, he said.

Kirshon said doctors had discussed with her the possibility of aborting one or more fetuses to help the others’ chances for survival, but Chukwu declined.

“The human being was meant to have one baby,” Kirshon said. “When you get up to these high-order multiple pregnancies, the uterus gets so large. It’s so unusual to be able to keep a pregnancy to the point where you deliver and the babies are able to survive.”

To keep pressure off her lower body for the last two or three weeks, Chukwu’s bed was at an extreme incline, with her head toward the floor, Kirshon said.

“I think she is remarkable, in that she was able to tolerate extreme conditions, to lie upside down in that degree of discomfort and that degree of immobility,” he said.

Chukwu was fed intravenously late in her pregnancy. “She was willing to forgo eating to allow extra room for the babies to grow,” Kirshon said.

The children are the first for Chukwu and her husband, Ike, who are U.S. citizens originally from Nigeria. They live in Houston.

They had long tried to have children before resorting to fertility drugs, Kirshon said. Chukwu suffered a miscarriage of triplets earlier this year while on the drugs.

“She has been rather private,” the doctor said. “The loss she had earlier this year made her cautious about this pregnancy.”

Word about the octuplets didn’t emerge until tips were called in Sunday to news organizations.

Kirshon said at least 25 people were involved in the deliveries, ferrying the babies in assembly-line fashion as they were removed from Chukwu’s womb.

In Iowa, Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey offered their congratulations in the midst of holiday celebrations with their septuplets, born Nov. 19, 1997.

“We wish them the Lord’s blessing and a merry Christmas,” the couple said through their agent. Bobbi McCaughey, whose children were only the second set of septuplets to be born alive, had also taken fertility drugs.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest multiple birth was nine babies in Sydney, Australia, in 1971. All those children died.

Three other octuplet births have been recorded in the last 13 years.

In 1985, a 25-year-old Turkish woman who had been taking fertility drugs gave birth to octuplets, but six died within 12 hours. The remaining two died within three days.

In 1996, Rosario Clavijo, 31, of Huelva, Spain, took fertility drugs and became pregnant with octuplets. Two fetuses died, and she gave birth to six healthy babies.

In August 1996, a 32-year-old British woman, Mandy Allwood, conceived eight fetuses and rejected medical advice to abort some of them. All of them died.