Quintuplets Are Born to Teacher in Ventura

A 30-year-old kindergarten teacher gave birth to quintuplets--three girls and two boys, each weighing a relatively hefty four pounds--Thursday afternoon.

With a staff of nearly 20 doctors and nurses assisting in the C-section, Lynn Bova, who teaches at Junipero Serra School in Ventura, gave birth to the babies in two minutes, shortly after 5 p.m. at Community Memorial Hospital.

The quintet weighed 20 pounds, 14 ounces, practically chubby by quintuplet standards.

“That’s plenty of baby to be carrying around in one person,” said Daryoush Jadali, a perinatologist who helped deliver the babies.

Quintuplets occur in one out of every 470 million deliveries, hospital officials said. There were 15 sets of quintuplets born worldwide in 2000, according to the Web site “Facts about Multiples.” Most are born with the use of fertility drugs, as were the Bovas’ babies.

At a news conference after the delivery, father Joe Bova, weary, pale and still wearing green surgical scrubs, said his wife had wept upon hearing that all five children were healthy.

The babies’ names are Abigail Lynn, Kathryn Ann, Emiline Madison, Samuel Matthew and Nathaniel Steven. Joe Bova, who works for the Ventura Unified School District, said that once his wife is feeling better, she will decide which baby gets which name.

Three of the babies were on oxygen Thursday evening, hospital officials said. They will remain in the hospital three to four weeks.

Once the newborns go home to the Bovas’ three-bedroom Ventura home, they will join older brother Ryan, 1 1/2, whom the Bovas adopted in 1999 after trying for five years to have a baby.

Lynn began taking fertility drugs after Ryan’s adoption, Joe Bova said.

The babies should go through about 11,000 diapers in their first year, Joe Bova said.