Ventura Teacher Gives Birth to Quintuplets

A 30-year-old kindergarten teacher gave birth to quintuplets--three girls and two boys, each weighing a relatively hefty 4 pounds--Thursday afternoon.

With a staff of almost 20 doctors and nurses assisting in the caesarean section, Lynn Bova’s babies were delivered in two minutes, shortly after 5 p.m., at Community Memorial Hospital here.

The quintuplets weighed a total of 20 pounds, 14 ounces, practically chubby by quintuplet standards.

“That’s plenty of baby to be carrying around in one person,” said Daryoush Jadali, 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 such births result from the use of fertility drugs, as was the case with the Bova children.

Joe Bova, the father, said his wife wept when she heard that the newborns were all healthy.

The babies will be named 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 for three to four weeks. Once the newborns go home to the Bovas’ Ventura house, they will join brother Ryan, 1, whom the Bovas adopted in 1999, after trying for five years to have a child.