When Liz Breach feels her unborn twins kick, she can not only tell which one it is, she also knows which of her two wombs the baby is growing in. The New Zealand mom, who discovered that she has two completely separate wombs a rare condition called uterus didelphys when she was a teenager, later successfully carryied her two sons, Trent, 7, and Logan, 3, in her right womb.

When she became pregnant again earlier this year, Liz, 32, couldn’t wait to find out which womb was housing her baby. Thrilled at the news of an addition to the family, her husband Jason, 39, offered to take time off work and come along to the ultrasound scan.

”But I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal, so I went alone,” recalls Liz.

However when the five-million-to-one bombshell was revealed, she immediately wished Jason had been at her side.

“The doctor asked how I would react if he told me I was having twins and that there was a baby in each womb,” says Liz. “I told him it wasn’t funny.”

The babies are due in the new year! We wish this family good luck.

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{ZUMA}

Each year over 500,000 babies are born prematurely(before 37 weeks). Of those babies 100,00 will have long term consequences and 5,000 won’t make it.

November is Prematurity Awareness Month. In honor of this, some parents who have had babies prematurely have offered to tell their stories to create awareness about his important cause.

Our first story is a pair of super twins, who arrived under some very unique circumstances.

Children’s name: Twins Peyton Ruby Mae and Marc Anthony
Date of birth: December 25th 2007
How far along were you in your pregnancy? 26.5 weeks
Do you know why your twins were born premature? PROM (premature rupture of membranes)
What did your they weigh at birth? Peyton was 980 grams and Marc was 1000 grams
Tell me a little bit about their NICU stay.

Peyton was twin A, her amniotic sac was thought to be ruptured at 22 weeks gestation. She was a natural birth. with apgar scores of 0/2/2 at birth. She was given surfactant and chest compressions. Peyton was vented for 5 weeks and was given steroid courses to get her off the vent. She was on cpap until she was 9.5 weeks. She left the NICU on a cannula. PDA was closed with medication. She had no brain bleeds and no ROP. Peyton had severe reflux and co-ordination desats and severe bradys. Peyton went home on an apnea monitor, oxygen, and caffeine.

Marc was an emergency c-section. His apgars were 2/2/5. He was given surfactant upon birth. He was on an oscillator vent for 2 weeks, traditional vent for 3 weeks, bi-pap/cpap for 4.5 weeks and cannula for 2 weeks. He had multiple pnu molthorx’s (holes in lungs) requiring three chest tubes. He also had a pembroke drain to release trapped air from his belly. Marc had hyperbilirubin due to very prolonged TPN feeds. He had excessive bile in his gut thought to be an infection and a grade 1 bleed on the right side and a large grade 4 bleed on the left. Even though he had several spinal taps to relieve pressure caused by the bleed, he has not required a shunt thus far. Marcs PDA was controlled (not closed) by medication. He had stage 1 ROP that healed with time. Marc went home with an apnea monitor and on caffeine.

How long were they in the NICU?

Peyton was 127 days and Marc was 97 days.

Are there any lasting effects from their prematurity?

Peyton is developmentally delayed in all areas with the exception of gross motor.
Marc is delayed in all areas. He has mild cerebral palsy and MRI shows PVL. He has a trapped cyst in his brain. At 16 months old he had surgery to close his PDA.

Do you have any other children? Were they premature?

No other children

If you had one piece of advice for a new preemie mom, what would it be?

I would tell other moms that YOU as the mom are your childs best and sometimes only advocate. Never stop fighting for your child and for what he or she needs.

Describe your children in one word: Amazing!

We Agree!

On Sunday night an unidentified Omaha couple became the proud parents to Nebraska’s second ever set of quintuplets at Bergan Mercy Medical Center.

Arriving by C-Section, the two boys and three girls arrived at 30 weeks gestation, each weighing roughly two pounds.

Confirming the multiple births yesterday, Dr. Michael Barsoom said that the quints he delivered were doing “very well.”

“Everything is as good as can be expected,” said Barsoom, Alegent Health’s director of maternal fetal medicine.

The parents don’t want names or personal family details released. They have declined interviews. They don’t even want to say where they live or the gender of the babies. (The World-Herald learned the breakdown of boys and girls).

Barsoom said he understands their hesitation. The children were born just shy of 30 weeks.

At that age, “you can’t be guaranteed the babies are going to be absolutely healthy,” he said. “God forbid . . . something happens. The best thing is to wait until the babies are ready to go home and then introduce them to the world.”

The Doctor also revealed that the quintuplets were conceived after the mother had undergone “one dose, one cycle of fertility pills.”

(No in vitro fertilization, which involves joining eggs and sperm in a petri dish, or intrauterine insemination, which involves injections of sperm into the uterus, were involved, he said.)

To wind up with five babies after that limited therapy, Barsoom said, was “completely unexpected.  I don’t think it’s ever been reported in literature,” he added.

While a few, but not all, of the babies are on ventilators, the doctor expects the quints to stay in hospital for the next 6-10 weeks.

Maybe they will be home for the Holiday Season!

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More sadness today for Amanda and Thomas Stansel after their fourth sextuplet was disconnected from life support last night.

According to the couple’s blog, Ashlyn had been fighting a nasty form of pneumonia call Yeast pneumonia for about a month.

On Saturday night Amanda wrote:

Ashlyn is not doing well at all. Her kidney function is getting worse. She is in renal failure and this is making the edema worse. The doctor said that her kidneys are beyond the point to where they could get better. They are just too far gone. They had to increase the ventilator settings to provide more support. She is just not doing well overall. This has been so hard. It hurts to see her so sick. We hoped and prayed that she would get better, but it is just not the Lord’s will for her.

The decision to withdraw care was made last night after the tiny baby’s oxygen saturation had dropped into the 50’s and 60’s(a healthy person’s O2 Sat’s are usually 99). The lower the number, the more oxygen needed from the ventilator to compensate.

Thomas and Amanda welcomed their sextuplets just over 2 months ago, weighing between 12.3 ounces and 1 pound, 2 ounces at 23 weeks gestation. Just a couple days after their arrival the couple lost Dallin and Katelyn, followed by Braden a few weeks later.

While this has been a rough journey for the couple they are still very optimistic about the 2 remaining babies; Hailey and Rachel.

Amanda blogged that:

• Haley is now weighing in at four pounds even and is 14 1/2 inches long. Haley I think has surprised the doctors with how well she is doing especially after having surgery 3 days ago.
• Little Rachel(pictured with Amanda) continues to grow and flourish each day. She weighs 3 lbs 7 oz and is 14 inches long. She is tolerating her feeds very well, she continues to eat like a champ. She loves to lay on her belly, she does much better with her oxygen saturation’s on her belly than her back.

We hope and pray that Haley and Rachel continue to grow and develop, so that we can bring them both home some day soon.

I also hope that they are able to bring these two girls home as well. Because both babies are still vented, they may just be home in time for the Holiday Season.

If having identical triplets wasn’t amazing enough, a Pennsylvania couple welcomed them at 33 weeks gestation on their third anniversary.

Matthew, Nathan and Michael arrived on September 30 each weighing just over 5lbs each.

New parents Amanda and Matt Faher spoke to The Today’s show host Ann Curry this morning about the amazing delivery and Amanda’s complicated pregnancy.

The Fahers learned that Amanda was carrying triplets during a routine ultrasound 18 weeks into her pregnancy. The technician saw two fetuses, then spotted another. Understandably, Amanda was shocked — but she still had the presence of mind to ask the technician to please not find any more.

As the pregnancy progressed, Amanda contracted preeclampsia, a condition associated with multiple embryos that causes high blood pressure and toxemia late in the pregnancy. She also developed gestational diabetes.

Despite the complications, Amanda continued working from home during her pregnancy until the preeclampsia intensified and she was admitted to hospital.

After only eight days, doctors made the decision to take the babies by Caesarean. Just by coincidence, that same say was Amanda’s 33rd week of pregnancy, and the couple’s wedding anniversary.

Identical triplets — which are called spontaneous triplets in the medical literature — are a rare occurrence. In the United States, the odds of such pregnancies are one in a million. In other countries, the odds go as high as one in 200 million, which is higher than the odds of winning the Powerball lottery.

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New daddy Matthew Broderick was spotted out for a walk with one of his twins in NYC today.

The baby wearing daddy looks like a natural carrying either Marion or Tabitha in a Babybjorn Baby Carrier Original Spirit in Angel White.

{SPLASH}

Exciting news in the North!

New York couple Bridgett Maskell and John Mistalski are the proud parents of 5 tiny little babies. The three girls and two boys arrived at just twenty five weeks gestation on Thursday afternoon at the at Women and Children’s Hospital in Buffalo.

The new mom was hoping to deliver the babies closer to her January due date. However on Thursday, “all of a sudden, my heart starting beating really, really fast and I couldn’t breathe then contraction, after contraction, so I knew she was going to deliver them,” said Maskell.

Dr. Stephanie Mann said a team was set up for each baby in the delivery room.

As for their prognosis, Dr. Mann said, “for 25 weekers, they’re actually doing as expected. All of the babies are on respiratory support.”

The largest baby weighs just under two pounds, the smallest is just shy of one pound.

Now that the size of the family has jumped from four to nine, the parents are scrambling to get necessary items like car seats and a vehicle to transport the entire family.

Bridget and John also have a set of twins at home.

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Just 7 months after their amazing entrance, the 3 surviving Nigerian sextuplets are being handed over to an orphanage tomorrow.

Hospital officials say they have no choice. The babies mom, Amudat Bello, passed away shortly after their arrival and their father, who ran away after they were born, has renounced his paternity and given up his rights.

During their stay in the NICU the hospital’s management opened an account for the infants at a local bank where people and organizations could donate money for their upkeep.

Now that they are well enough to go home, they will be discharged tomorrow to a local orphanage.

It’s all very sad. These babies have survived so much. At birth some weighed as little as 600gms. Now they will live in a facility where they could be split up in order to be adopted.

Their birth holds the record of the highest number of babies delivered in one birth, in Nigeria. There have been two other cases of the birth of quadruplets.

These are the families that need support. Not the ones living in million dollar houses.

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Exciting news in India. A 24-year old mother has welcomed the first all-male set of quintuplets, incidentally, also the lone surviving set in India. Sabira Khan delivered the five babies yesterday at 28 weeks gestation by C-section in just 3 minutes.

“The set was conceived naturally. This, apart from being the first survivor set in India, is the eleventh all-male set and the seventeenth set of natural conception in the world,” said Dr Suchitra Pandit, the gynaecologist who operated upon Sabira. The average weight of the babies is 800 grams.

Their proud mom was happy that the operation was successful but wished that at least one of the five was a baby girl. Her husband Ubed, who runs a garment shop, was also happy with his bundles of joy.

“Today is Jumma (Friday). And it was on a Jumma when I got to know my wife was pregnant with five babies. I am very happy. We will be able to afford their upbringing,” he told reporters.

Two of the babies are on ventilators, the rest are in the NICU to gain strength and weight. Doctors expect them to stay in the hospital for 6-8 weeks.

Citing statistics, the spokesperson said that only 16 sets of quintuplets have been born without ovulation-inducing drugs in the world so far.

‘Ours is the 17th one in the world. In India, there have been five sets of quintuplets out of which two were stillborn, the third and fourth set were born but died within two hours. The fourth set of quintuplets were delivered at Lucknow but they were undiagnosed and two died,’ he said.

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It’s hard to believe that its been 2 years since Karoline and Ben Byler welcomed Florida’s first set of surviving sextuplets.

Brady Christopher, Eli Benjamin, Ryan Patrick, Jackson Robert, Charlie Craig and lone girl MacKenzie Margaret arrived more than 2 months early on September 1, 2007 weighing between two and three pounds each.

At the time, the babies arrival drew worldwide media attention, including an exclusive contract with Inside Edition for Karoline and her husband, Ben.

Their births were so high profile, they helped inspire the design of Bayfront’s new Baby Place, set to open this December.

Two years later Ben and Karoline have their hands full.

Now the fenced back yard looks like a preschool, with big kid swings, ride-on toys and stray sippy cups scattered across the lawn. Florida’s first surviving sextuplets have become toddlers. “That was our stimulus check,” mom Karoline said of the playground equipment. “But it was a good investment.”

For the most part, the children are healthy. All get therapy for speech delays, which is common for multiples, who often are premature and who copy each other’s mispronunciations, a phenomenon known as “twin talk.”

Charlie, who required oxygen even when he came home from the hospital, has asthma. He also has a condition that makes him unable to tolerate food textures, so he still eats the pureed stuff.

Ryan, whose condition was critical at one point shortly after the birth, has mild cerebral palsy and was the last to walk. He began taking steps in June. He wears special shoes and gets therapy to help with a slight limp.

They all excel at different things.

• MacKenzie is the agile one, climbing on everything at Gymboree.
• Eli has the best fine motor skills and enjoys puzzles and small toys.
• Charlie can already perform a broad jump.
• Brady can completely undress himself without assistance, sometimes to his parents’ embarrassment.
• Jackson, whom his parents call “the professor,” has to thoroughly investigate anything before he’ll get involved in it.
• Ryan is the biggest eater. Karoline calls him the human garbage pail.

Karoline’s meeting with Kate Gosselin connection:

Earlier this year, Karoline loaded up the sixpack and took them to meet reality television star and fellow sextuplet mom Kate Gosselin at a book signing in Sarasota.

She spent 45 minutes in line, hoping for a nugget of wisdom from the star of Jon & Kate Plus 8.

When her turn came, Karoline said, Gosselin barely looked at them.

“She asked me why I brought all the kids,” Karoline said. “Then she just moved onto the next person.”

Karoline later wondered if Gosselin’s snub had anything to do with revelations about Jon’s relationship with another woman. Or perhaps it was just her celebrity.

“Maybe she forgets that she was in my position four or five years ago,” Karoline said. She used to watch the show but refuses now “because it’s all about their divorce.”

While the Bylers realize they could have pursued their own show, they say they value their privacy and they want the kids to grow up as normal as possible.

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