Geisha Kow­lessar

It took three min­utes for a team of 18 doc­tors to de­liv­er the coun­try's first sex­tu­plets–three boys and three girls–at the Ma­ter­ni­ty Hos­pi­tal of the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex at Mt Hope, yes­ter­day.

The 28-year-old first-time moth­er from cen­tral Trinidad was al­so re­port­ed as the first to have de­liv­ered sex­tu­plets in the en­tire Caribbean.The ba­bies were con­ceived af­ter the moth­er used the fer­til­i­ty drug Clo­mid.The first ba­by was born at 10.10 am, said Prof Bharath Bas­saw, con­sul­tant ob­ste­tri­cian and gy­nae­col­o­gist, at a press con­fer­ence at the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day.

The ba­bies, not yet named, were at the hos­pi­tal's In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) up to late yes­ter­day.

Bas­saw said they may in­clude a set of triplets, or pos­si­bly a pair of twins and four sin­gle ba­bies, but doc­tors need­ed to look at the pla­cen­ta to de­ter­mine that.The Ce­sare­an sec­tion took an es­ti­mat­ed 40 min­utes, which Bas­saw said was "quite good.""We got all six ba­bies with­in three min­utes, which was quite sur­pris­ing to all of us as well. We had a cadre of neona­tal staff," he said.

The moth­er, whose name was not re­vealed, was giv­en a due date of next Thurs­day, but be­cause she was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in breath­ing, doc­tors de­cid­ed to op­er­ate ten days ear­ly.Bas­saw said the new­borns had to be kept in ven­ti­la­tors and on drips for the next cou­ple of weeks, af­ter which they would be in­tro­duced to breast milk.Their birth weights range from one pound nine ounces to three pounds, and the small­est, who is a girl, would most like­ly do the best. "Be­cause of the de­creased growth that ba­by is go­ing to be very tough," Bas­saw ex­plained. "The fe­male ba­bies do bet­ter than male ba­bies."

Asked if all the ba­bies would sur­vive, Bas­saw said he was op­ti­mistic, adding one pos­i­tive sign was their weight."We're deal­ing with pre­ma­ture ba­bies, al­though the weight was very good in terms of what we had ac­tu­al­ly ex­pect­ed but these ba­bies are still quite frag­ile."At this point they would be on the drips and ven­ti­la­tor to min­imise the risk of in­fec­tion. They have to be kept warm. We have to look out for jaun­dice. So there are a num­ber of is­sues with them."

He said the moth­er was in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion and had to be mon­i­tored close­ly. If there were no signs of sig­nif­i­cant bleed­ing she would be list­ed as sta­ble.Say­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence was "dif­fi­cult and stress­ful," Bas­saw said the moth­er was ad­mit­ted to hos­pi­tal in Jan­u­ary.Asked if it could be risky for the moth­er to un­der­go an­oth­er preg­nan­cy, Bas­saw said she was now at a high­er risk for an­oth­er mul­ti­ple preg­nan­cy.He said the moth­er said she want­ed five chil­dren and her hus­band want­ed six."The fa­ther said to me he got all six in one go. He's hap­py with the three boys and three girls."

Sex­tu­plets cre­ate T&T his­to­ry

The de­ci­sion

"We ac­tu­al­ly made the de­ci­sion just af­ter 7 am yes­ter­day (Sun­day)," Bas­saw said. "Per­son­al­ly I felt as if I was back in school.He said Dr She­henaz Mo­hammed, chair­man of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, put him on the spot to jus­ti­fy the de­liv­ery.Af­ter a meet­ing on Sun­day which last­ed sev­er­al hours, mea­sures were fi­nalised to en­sure there were no glitch­es."We took her al­most past 30 weeks. It was a lot, be­cause of the hype about this preg­nan­cy. The me­dia cov­er­age and al­so from out­side. We were ac­tu­al­ly on test to show we could take this preg­nan­cy and hoped we had a good out­come."I got up at three this morn­ing and I was just re­hears­ing the steps. My heart was rac­ing, " Bas­saw said.

Mo­hammed, who al­so spoke yes­ter­day, stressed the ba­bies must be care­ful­ly mon­i­tored."We have to take pre­cau­tions with them, one of them be­ing at risk of in­fec­tion, and that's why no one is al­lowed in the neona­tal unit ex­cept the moth­er and the fa­ther."They were born at 30-plus weeks, and they are not go­ing to be out in a week or two."She said be­fore the de­liv­ery, so­cial work­ers made vis­its to the fam­i­ly's home to make an as­sess­ment for as­sis­tance.Say­ing the moth­er faced a long road ahead in tak­ing care of six ba­bies at once, Mo­hammed said psy­chi­a­trists would al­so be coun­selling the moth­er to en­sure she was men­tal­ly pre­pared for the task.Nurs­ing ad­min­is­tra­tor Claudette Fras­er Udi­ka un­der­scored the tremen­dous team ef­fort of the med­ical staff and praised her coun­ter­parts from the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for their as­sis­tance.