In Pakistan, a 27-year-old woman created a sensation by giving birth to sextuplets. On Thursday night 19th April, Zeenat Waheed was admitted to a hospital in Rawalpindi, where she gave birth to sextuplets—four baby boys and two baby girls. Fortunately, the mother and her six children are healthy with no complications. All the infants weigh less than two pounds each.
The infants were placed in an incubator, where they are being cared for and monitored in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). The hospital is extremely joyful over the birth of the sextuplets and has assured that the family will receive all the necessary support and facilities during their stay.
When more than one baby is born, it is called a multiple pregnancy. Multiple pregnancies come in different orders: two babies are twins, three are triplets, and more than three are high-order multiples. These pregnancies often result from fertility treatments or older parental age. With multiple pregnancies, the risk of complications such as preeclampsia, premature labor and birth, gestational hypertension, gestational diabetes, or fetal growth restriction increases.
How do these multiple pregnancies occur? One method is splitting, where the fertilized egg splits and implants into the uterine wall. The other method is when multiple eggs and sperm are fertilized. As a result of splitting, twins are identical and share the same genetic material, while in fraternal twins, the genetic material varies.
A similar incident occurred in Brazil in 1952, where a 38-year-old woman gave birth to quintuplets. The tiny babies were kept in incubators, and they survived well. Thanks to government support, financial assistance was provided to the couple.
References
1. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/9710-expecting-twins-or-triplets
(Input from various sources)
(Rehash/Dr. Manav Chaturvedi/MSM)
