Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Saudi Arabian woman in DC mother of septuplets!!! |
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| jannah |
| 07/13/01 at 18:12:16 |
| ma'shallah!! please make dua for the babies they are still in critical condition!! Doctors expect all septuplets to survive WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The mother of the world's newest septuplets is expected to see her newborns for the first time on Friday, doctors at Washington's Georgetown University Hospital said. The babies are listed in critical condition. They are expected to survive, doctors said. A team of 25 medical professionals helped deliver the tiny but healthy babies by Caesarean section Thursday night. Five boys and two girls, all between 2 and 2.5 pounds, were delivered between 11:25 and 11:28 p.m. with the help of five doctors, three anesthesiologists and dozens of nurses and other support staff at the hospital. The infants are in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU. The mother, who has requested anonymity, is in good condition. All but one of the infants are on support ventilators, but Dr. Siva Subramanian told a news conference Friday they are breathing on their own and the ventilator settings are slowly coming down. A team of doctors, nurses and specialists in premature infants is assigned to each baby. Dr. Craig Winkel said all the babies scored between seven and nine on the 10-point Apgar scale -- a means of measuring the health of newborns minutes after birth. Seven to 10 is considered normal. The mother was seven months pregnant when she gave birth. She was admitted to the hospital in mid-June after her community physician, Dr. Mutahar Fauzia, referred her to the hospital. Fauzia said the woman underwent ovulation induction to increase the number of eggs she was producing. The treatment consists of oral medicine or injections. The woman's doctors would not disclose which type of treatment she underwent. The woman was informed at seven weeks' gestation that she was carrying seven embryos. The parents decided, at that time, to continue with the pregnancy. Doctors called 'angels' When asked if the mother had considered aborting some of the babies to give the others a better survival chance, Fauzia said the woman is a Muslim and "did not believe in the taking [of the] lives of the babies." No other details were disclosed about the family. Fauzia, who became emotional during a press conference Friday, said she was thankful to the team of Georgetown physicians, whom she called "angels." "I have been very lucky that the ending is going to be, God willing, good," she said. The doctors had been preparing for the delivery for weeks. "We have had several dry runs to make sure everybody [was] available," Subramanian said. "As planned, it did happen. Everybody responded on time. We were all ready." The father, who was present in the delivery room, was concerned about the health of his wife during delivery, said Dr. Helaine Landy. "He didn't want to go to NICU before knowing his wife was OK," Landy said. But after the babies were born, he broke out in a broad smile, another physician said. The babies are expected to stay in the hospital for seven to nine weeks. Not all fertility experts celebrate The birth of the septuplets was not greeted with cheers by some in the fertility field who said the goal should be to have more normal births. "I think that high-order multiple births are as much a failure of treatment as no pregnancy is," said Eric Widra of Shady Grove Fertility Center, a Washington-area clinic. "Most multiple births of this magnitude don't make it to survival," he said, and in those that do, "the children often have long-standing handicaps." "So to celebrate this is fine for the doctors who have saved this pregnancy. To celebrate this as a success of fertility treatment is not appropriate," he said. Georgetown University Hospital was also the site of the birth of sextuplets -- six children -- to Jacqueline Thompson on May 8, 1997. She and her husband, Linden, were the first African-American couple to give birth to sextuplets, all of whom survived. The Thompsons also claim to have broken several other records, according to the family's Web site, including the first natural sextuplet pregnancy and the longest sextuplet pregnancy in the United States -- more than seven months. The birth of the Thompson sextuplets drew far less attention than the November 1997 birth of septuplets to an Iowa couple, Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey. The McCaugheys received an outpouring of company endorsements and donations that helped pay for the cost of raising seven children. In 1985, Patti Frustaci was the first woman in the United States to give birth to septuplets. The Frustaci septuplets -- four boys and three girls -- were born by Caesarean section 12 weeks premature in Orange, California. One girl, Christina, was stillborn. Over the next 19 days, three more of the infants -- David, James and Bonnie -- died of hyaline membrane disease, a condition in which the lungs collapse after each breath. The surviving infants -- Richard, Patricia and Stephen -- were found to have cerebral palsy at age 2. A year later, the children also were diagnosed as mentally retarded. Sam and Patti Frustaci sued the fertility clinic and the physician who treated the mother with Pergonal, the same drug used by Bobbi McCaughey. When asked why the family in the latest births has chosen anonymity, Dr. Richard Goldberg said, "At this point and time, the family wants to remain anonymous. That may change at some other point down the road, [but] we're going to protect their confidentiality." Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/07/13/washington.septuplets/index.html |
| Re: Saudi Arabian woman in DC mother of septuplets!!! |
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| jannah |
| 07/15/01 at 00:43:05 |
| From: Arsalan The first set of septuplets in the U.S. were born to a Muslim family... The New York Times July 13, 2001 New Septuplets in Critical Condition By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 11:44 a.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- A woman gave birth to five boys and two girls, the first set of septuplets born in the United States in more than three years. All were in critical condition Friday at a Washington hospital. ``We'll have to take one day at a time,'' Dr. Craig Winkel said at Georgetown University Hospital. Six of the babies were on ventilators to help them breathe; the seventh required only a little assistance but then breathed without aid. Winkel said one of the children was being treated with medication for a blood pressure problem. The babies, born 12 weeks prematurely, weighed between 2.2 and 2.4 pounds each -- a critically low weight that carries high risk. They were delivered by Caesarean section in a three-minute period that began at 11:25 p.m. EDT Thursday. Winkel said that nationally, babies born with similar birth weights have an 85 percent to 90 percent chance of survival. However, he said these figures apply to single or twin births and that additional risks are associated with septuplets. He would not talk about the chances that all seven will survive. There are only two other sets of surviving septuplets in the world, one delivered in 1998 by a woman in Saudi Arabia and the other born in 1997 in Iowa. Doctors said the patient, whom they would not identify, is a Muslim woman who took fertility treatments. They said that because of her religion, she chose not to abort any fetuses even though that option was offered to her as a way to improve the chances for the remaining babies to live. ``The babies are expected to be in the critical condition for the next few days,'' Winkel said. The woman went into spontaneous labor at about 8 p.m. Thursday, with medical teams standing by. The delivery was attended by about 25 doctors and nurses, with a similar number standing by in the neonatal intensive care unit a few steps away. Doctors said the mother is recovering well. ``We are not out of the woods in terms of the babies,'' Winkel said. ``It is a great start.'' He said it was the first birth of septuplets on the U.S. East Coast. Each baby was assigned a medical team consisting of a neonatalogist, nurse, neonatal fellow, pediatric resident, neonatal nurse practitioner and respiratory therapist who stabilized the infants in the first moments of life. Doctors said the parents had names for the newborns but for now medical personnel were referring to them as babies A through G. The number of births of five or more babies in the United States has almost doubled since 1989 -- reaching 79 in 1998 -- largely because of infertility treatments that can have the unintended effect of causing multiple births. Nkem Chukwu, gave birth to eight babies in a Houston hospital in 1998; one was born 12 days before the others. One died a week after birth. That was the first time a woman had delivered living octuplets. They were 2 1/2 months premature and each weighed less than two pounds. The seven babies born to Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey in Carlisle, Iowa, recently marked their first 3 1/2 years. Three have health problems. The Guinness Book of World Records says the largest recorded multiple birth was nine babies -- five boys and four girls -- born to Geraldine Broderick in Australia on June 13, 1971. None survived. A Neptune, N.J., woman pregnant with septuplets lost all seven to a bacterial infection in the fifth month of pregnancy in February 2000. Georgetown doctors said the babies born Thursday will be in the hospital seven to nine weeks. The mother could be released in four or five days. Dr. Siva Subramanian, who heads Georgetown's neonatal unit, said most of the babies' organs are not fully developed. ``What we are doing is keeping them in an incubator and providing nutrition ... allowing for the development of these organs outside the uterus,'' he said. |
| Re: Saudi Arabian woman in DC mother of septuplets!!! |
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| taueeya |
| 07/15/01 at 06:27:31 |
| Assalamu Alaikum, [quote]There are only two other sets of surviving septuplets in the world, one delivered in 1998 by a woman in Saudi Arabia and the other born in 1997 in Iowa[/quote]. As far as I remember, (and I am pretty sure that I remember it correctly) within the last 2/3 years, a lady in Islamabad, Pakistan gave birth to a set of septuplets, all alive and healthy and survived without any medical support. I am amazed, why aren't they included here in The New York times' report, although, this news/article itself appeared both in 'Jang' and 'Dawn', the 2 leading newspapers of Pakistan, Jang being the Urdu newspaper and Dawn, the English newspaper. Wassalam. |
| Re: Saudi Arabian woman in DC mother of septuplets!!! |
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| Haniff |
| 07/17/01 at 07:02:27 |
| Assalamu Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh Govt to foot hospital bill for septuplets [i]By a Staff Writer[/i] JEDDAH, 17 July — The government will bear the cost of treatment for the newborn Saudi septuplets and their mother in the United States, Minister of Health Dr. Osama Shubokshi announced yesterday. Speaking to Saudi Press Agency, he said Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, had issued orders to this effect. The doctor treating the children said yesterday that they were doing very well and six of them were breathing on their own. “Those babies are doing very well,” Dr. Siva Subramanian, head of Georgetown University Hospital’s neonatal service, told ABC’s Good Morning America. “Six babies are off the ventilator,” he said, adding that the seventh infant was still using a respirator. Five of the children were breathing on their own on Sunday. Their 28-year-old mother, whose name has not been disclosed, has held her babies and “seems to be doing great,” said Dr. Craig Winkel, the hospital’s head of obstetrics and gynecology. The five boys and two girls, the world’s third recorded case of live septuplets, were born late Thursday, some 11 weeks premature. Despite myriad problems, according to Subramanian, “many things are controllable for babies this size.” Father Fahd Al-Qahtani, a Saudi high school teacher studying for his masters at George Washington University, told The Washington Post yesterday that he and his wife had first come to the United States three years ago, seeking medical treatment for their 6-month-old son. The child was on a waiting list in Pittsburgh for a small-bowel transplant but died before the organ became available. Two years earlier, they lost their 3-year-old daughter Hadil, who needed a liver transplant, the report said. “God took two of them, and He gave us seven,” said 29-year-old Qahtani, who lives in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia. “We thank Him for it all the time.” “We hope and we pray for them to get better,” the father was quoted as saying. “We pray for them to be healthy,” he said. The septuplets were all delivered within three minutes by Caesarian section late on Thursday. The seven infants are listed in critical condition in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit and are expected to remain hospitalized for several months, The Post said. The newspaper said Qahtani and his wife had named the septuplets after members of the Saudi Royal family. In order of birth, the babies are Bandar, Hayfa, Naif, Shamma, Abdullah, Abdul Aziz and Sultan, the Post said. The couple also have a 9-year-old son. “After his brother died, he always prayed to God to have a lot of brothers and sisters,” Qahtani told the Post. After learning of the birth of his sisters and brothers, the youngster said, “I’m the leader,” his father told The Post. The Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, telephoned the father shortly after the septuplets’ birth, the report said. “(He) spoke with me and my wife and said, ‘If you want anything, I’m your big brother.’ This means in my culture, ‘Anything you want, I will do it for you,’” Qahtani was quoted as saying. The Post said the couple had wanted 12 children. With their 9-year old son, they are now a family of 10. [i]Arab News - 17 July 2001[/i] Wassalamu Alaikum Waramatullahi Wabarakatuh Haniff |
| Re: Saudi Arabian woman in DC mother of septuplets!!! |
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| jannah |
| 07/17/01 at 08:56:11 |
| [quote] The newspaper said Qahtani and his wife had named the septuplets after members of the Saudi Royal family. In order of birth, the babies are Bandar, Hayfa, Naif, Shamma, Abdullah, Abdul Aziz and Sultan, the Post said. [/quote] wow talk about nationalism! |
| Re: Saudi Arabian woman in DC mother of septuplets!!! |
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| Haniff |
| 07/17/01 at 10:25:23 |
| Assalamu Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh [quote]wow talk about nationalism![/quote] Perhaps, showing gratitude to their (?)magnanimous offer or currying favour with them??? Haniff |
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