US woman gives birth to octuplets

A US woman has given birth to eight babies, becoming just the second person recorded in the US to have delivered a set of living octuplets.

The six boys and two girls, who were nine weeks premature, were delivered by Caesarean section in the hospital near Los Angeles, California.

The babies weighed in at between 1lb 8 ounces (820g) and 3lb 4oz (1.47kg) and are all said to be doing well.

They were screaming and kicking around very vigorously, a doctor said.

The mother, whose..

BBC LINK


It's the 2nd time this has ever happened. I hope she gets a lot of support, because its going to be hard taking care of 8 little ones.

All i can say is poor women!

I cant not imagine how she has got through giving birth 8 times, She deserves a medal that's for sure,

Hopefully she will get lots of support as goodness knows how she is going to cope with 8 little babies, and I'm sure its going to mean they will have to get a bigger house,

Shocking stuff and something i'm sure many are glad does not happen very often,

Congrats to her! (I think) I dont know what I would do with 8 children... Sell afew off maybe!? hah!

Lets hope the baby companies will give her family the support they gave that other woman who gave birth to 8.

I'm sure we'll be seeing them on some sappy edition of Extreme Home makeover before long.

We human females are not equipped for multiple births of this magnitude.

We may have a rare case of more than two but eight is nothing more than the pushing of fertility drugs to purse pregnancy, I find this very troubling and very irresponsible from the part of the parents, that in many occasions have not financial means to support such big families and end up becoming a burden to social programs.

Sorry but I find not reason why to applaud such birth.

I think I need new glasses. I first read the title as "US woman gives birth to octopus."

Anyway, I do hope they can provide for them in a good manner and agree this sounds like a case of fertility drugs gone amok.

Hey, I posted a video about this earlier today here

And Marg, having had multiples (not this many!) myself I will agree with you.

There is an upper limit to how much baby a woman can fit into the womb--about 12 pounds at the very most. With each additional baby conceived, they all get smaller and are born about 3 weeks earlier.

It is difficult once you go beyond 2 or 3, even dangerous to mother and the babies. The DIscover CHannel makes it sound like fun to have high-order multiples, but they only show the uncommon happy outcomes. Some women end up with permanent organ damage from supporting so many fetues, and the babies--if they are all alive when they are born and survive infancy--often face extreme physical and mental handicaps from being born early. That is why many women choose to reduce or terminate these extreme pregnancies.

It's not like they didn't expect this. They had fertility drugs.
Not me.

I also see this as an irresponsible tragedy. if they were multi billionaires and had the ability to pay nanny's to help care for the children, then it is fairly reasonable to assume it could all work out.

I know so many young people today that cringe at the thought of bringing life into the world. Truly that is being responsible.

Look at the numbers, 6 boys and two girls, sounds like mother nature was making it clear these kids have a great chance at becoming cannon fodder in some not too distant war.

Yes I have a friend that could not carry a fetus more than three months, she spend multiple times aborting her sets of twins and triplex just to get one full term pregnancy.

She had to undergo in vitro fertilization to get her wish finally he had her set of twins, but she had to spend the entire pregnancy bed ridden.

Multiple pregnancies of this magnitude in order to be able to hold the uterus close so the mother do not abort the fetuses they have to put stitches on it and spend the entire pregnancy bed ridden as the body can not hold that amount of weight without ripping their uterus off and falling down.

Many women have that problem even with one pregnancy alone like my friend did.

Her uterus just could not hold no even a single pregnancy.

reply to post by marg6043


Physical difficulties aside, It would be a very difficult situation to be in, especially for those staunchly opposed to abortion, because by trying to keep all of the babies as they were concieved could lead to the loss of one or even all of the fetuses, but reducing the pregnancy could give at least some of them a healthier chance at living.

Exactly, See my friend wasn't greedy like many other womens are, when you go under fertility drugs or invitro fertilization, you will get multiple embryos, you have the choice to thin out the ones that will not be healthy in order to be able to keep the healthy ones and give them room to grow ad get a healty birth weight.

But some women get greedy they want all of them and hope that they will be all fine.

That is without regards for the health of the fetuses and themselves.

I agree with two may be three fetuses, but eight is an overkill.

[edit on 27-1-2009 by marg6043]

I am the Mother of twins, mine were 7lbs 11ozs and 6-2 at birth, they were very healthy and so was I. Fraternal twins so seperate placentas and all, very weighty and I was at peak physical fitness a the time...

It is like pressure on your womb and weight on your vaginal area. I came through quite fine and no residiual effects. But eight> they are so small and born early, I wonder how much they weighed total? I have seen women give birth to 13-14 lb babies! OUch!

Oh you too Antar? Mine were each about 4 1/2 pounds. Tiny little things!

You remind me... permanent incontinece is another unpleasant side effect that sometimes strikes mothers of high-order multiples.

[edit on 27-1-2009 by asmeone2]

Humans are not meant to have litters.

I thought there was supposed to be legislation that you can no longer have more then 2 or three embryos transplanted at a time?

Eight?

Originally posted by nixie_nox
Humans are not meant to have litters.

I thought there was supposed to be legislation that you can no longer have more then 2 or three embryos transplanted at a time?

Eight?

Maybe on the state level...

But there have been cases of 1 or 2 embryos becoming 3 or more after transfer.

They split and the woman will end up with partially-identical triplets or double-identical quads.

And to top it off , shes going to breast feed them . Dogs are equiped to feed a litter but not humans. I think it's another medical mess up and the children are the ones that will suffer from it.

Eight little ones? Try 14. The young mother already has six young children. Which raises the question, why was this woman taking fertility drugs? At this point, I'm going to put this into the "My God, what were they thinking?"-file