Vancouver sextuplets 'very tiny but all 6 are alive' David Carrigg, The Province
Published: Monday, January 08, 2007

"They're very tiny but all six are alive," an informed source told The Province late last night. It is believed to be the first time sextuplets have been born in Canada.

The source said the four boys and two girls each weighed about 800 grams, or 1.8 pounds, and were born between 25 and 26 weeks into their mom's pregnancy.

In general, babies born after 24 to 25 weeks of gestation are mature enough to survive, although they need a prolonged period of intensive care. Babies born premature have a higher risk of blindness, hearing problems and mental retardation than babies born full term.

"We used to say viability for the baby was 28 weeks," the source said. "But that's changed now. They have a good shot at survival but there's a chance some may not become fully functioning adults."

The mother had been at B.C. Women's Hospital and Health Centre for several weeks because doctors wanted to keep her stable to maximize the time the babies would stay in the womb.

The source said one of the babies was born naturally and the others by emergency caesarean section.

A hospital spokesman would not confirm or deny the births had taken place, citing a privacy policy.

The hospital was in the news a few weeks ago when rare conjoined twins were born there. They went home just before Christmas.

Among multiple births, six babies are extremely rare and until now, apparently unknown in Canada. Most multiple births, including the birth of Vancouver's sextuplets, are due to the use of fertility drugs.

There are just six sets of sextuplets living in the United States -- two sets in New York, and one each in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Alabama and Kansas.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2001 that the incidence of triplets and other high-number births declined for the first time in 1999, after the rate nearly doubled between 1990 and 1998.

Canada's most famous multiple births were the Dionne quintuplets, delivered by a country doctor in a rural Ontario farmhouse. They became international Depression-era celebrities, their every move recorded and written about.

They were the first-ever quints known to have survived infancy.

OMG, six babies!! What a way to start the new year!

I wonder if I’m the only person who has mixed feelings on this. I don’t want to start a baby war, but I just don’t think that having children is a right endowed to everyone. Maybe there is a reason some people can’t have children, and they ought to concentrate their efforts and funds on something else. Is it selfish to insist on having children to the extent of the expense that goes into fertility drugs -as well as the risks that come with having multiple children at once? The article quotes the ‘source’ as saying “there's a chance some may not become fully functioning adults.” Is that fair to the children? Who are we, as potential parents, to make that decision for the children? It can also be a serious drain on the time and emotions of the parents, as well as the grandparents and other relatives of the family and even the community as a whole. I remember reading an article about a set of quintuplets (I believe) and their parents literally couldn’t care for them by themselves. They relied on volunteers and donations from the community to be able to feed and clothe and diaper their babies. Certainly as they get older, the intense care required lessens, but the expense only becomes greater.
Granted, I am biased. I do not have or want children so I have never been in the position of wanting a child so badly I would do anything, regardless of the risks or later costs, to have one. Maybe it’s inappropriate for me to have an opinion about this -but I never really was one for propriety.

There's been an unconfirmed report today that one of the sextuplets has died.

It's a moral issue, whether to risk the future of all one's children of a single birth just in order to have the egotistical pleasure of reproducing one's own genes. But there's a really powerful instinct which drives the urge.

Humans typically have single births for a reason. Human babies are very vulnerable, we are all born 'premature' in a sense, because we come from the womb very early. This is because we have very large heads. If we remained in the womb until our limbs and organs were better developed, our heads would be proportionately larger too, and we would die at birth, and so would our mothers. The female pelvis is not fitted to give living passage to a huge-headed infant. If there were such strains in the human evolutionary tree, they have become extinct.

Multiple births of two or even three can survive if there is sufficient extended family or tribe support. Beyond that, the survival prognosis is poor.

Other animals have tiny heads, compared to us. Most antelopes (in fact most browsers and grazers) can stand and walk, even run, on the first day they're born. Evolution has shaped them, so that they can escape the predators who pick off weak offspring. If they can't keep up with the moving herd, they die. They are eating independently well within the first year of life. Humans need careful tending for at least seven years.

So the cost, for humans, is that the mothers nurse them with milk for up to two years, and must carry them around, protecting them from predators for much longer, because they can neither walk, climb nor run well. They can't eat solid food (such as is found in nature) until they have teeth. So if it were up to the mother alone, she could not care for and still protect the young. The leopard would get mother and child too, unless she abandoned the young one and made her escape. Therefore few humans could have survived unless there are two parents, and also related group members, to keep the hyenas away. This requirement in turn gives way to that rarity in nature, the caring male parent.

Only in a very protective society, with many social services -- an artificial situation, you might say -- can a naturally-conceived multiple-birth set survive. They are usually premature because the human womb has not evolved to hold more than three fetuses, tops. So premature labor is usually the result.

It's a cruel life for these tiny ones. They suffer from 'burns' due to skin that is injured by ordinary light and air. Their lungs do not expand well, so they are subject to breathing problems and infections. They are in chronic pain until they become as 'mature' as a normal new-born. They need umbilical nurture, and since birth deprives them of that, they must be sustained with tubes until the survivors reach the physical maturity necessary to survive without intensive care.

And that's only the beginning. Some of them may have lifelong physical and mental problems. Many marriages cannot survive these demands. If they outlive their last surviving parent (as normal people usually do) they had better be lucky enough to have a very supportive extended family, or a very supportive society, or their end will be pathetic indeed.

What are the options for a childless couple?

- Adopt a healthy child who needs parents
- Have fertility treatments, but agree in advance to terminate all but the largest early in the pregnancy; this will optimize the chances of at least some
- Accept childlessness.

The alternative seems to me heartless and inhumane.