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Italian Mother Gives Birth to Octuplets
A Sicilian woman has given birth three months early to a set of octuplets conceived with the help of fertility drugs. Seven of the babies have survived.
Mariella Mazzara, 31, went into labour on Wednesday, delivering a little girl. Doctors had been struggling since then to delay additional deliveries in hopes of giving the fetuses' organs more time to develop.
In spite of the doctors' efforts, Mazzara went into labour again on Sunday, giving birth to a boy. Doctors delivered the remaining six babies by Caesarean section later Sunday night.
One of the male infants died, the ANSA news agency said.
All the babies, including the one born earlier in the week, weighed about 500 grams, or just over a pound.
The four girls and three boys who survived their premature birth were in neonatal intensive care at Milan's Niguarda hospital.
Mazzara, of Trapani, Sicily of Italy and husband Giovanni Pierrera, 32, turned to fertility drugs after trying for six years to have a child. She had just entered her 25th week of pregnancy when the first child was born.
Some fertility experts have been critical of the treatment, saying more careful monitoring might have prevented Mazzara from conceiving such a dangerously large number of babies.
The family reportedly rejected aborting some of the fetuses to enhance survival chances for the rest.
The prognosis for infants born so early is not good, experts say. But a Houston family in the U.S. which had octuplets conceived through fertility treatment celebrated the first birthday of the seven survivors on Dec. 8, 1999.
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