Kali­fa Clyne

One of T&T's first sex­tu­plets died on Sat­ur­day at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Mt Hope, af­ter fight­ing for sur­vival with the help of hos­pi­tal ven­ti­la­tors for al­most a month.Ac­cord­ing to sources at the hos­pi­tal, ba­by num­ber one died ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing from se­vere res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems and gas­tro-in­testi­nal bleed­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with pre­ma­ture births.The boy had been crit­i­cal­ly ill and re­mained on a ven­ti­la­tor even af­ter his two broth­ers and three sis­ters be­gan breath­ing on their own.

"This was the ba­by that was crit­i­cal­ly ill and the par­ents were coun­selled from birth and un­der­stood that his chance of sur­vival was slim," a hos­pi­tal source said. The par­ents, Kieron Cum­mings and Pe­tra Lee Foon, are re­port­ed to be com­ing to terms with their loss.A rel­a­tive of the fam­i­ly, in a brief e-mail to the me­dia, stat­ed: "It is with deep sad­ness that the Cum­mings and Lee Foon in­form you that Kay­lan Nasir Lee Foon Cum­mings, the cou­ple's first­born, passed away on Sat­ur­day, 30 March, 2013. His broth­ers and sis­ters con­tin­ue to do well and our prayers re­main strong for their progress."

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The par­ents were told by hos­pi­tal staff on Fri­day that Kay­lan was not do­ing well. Even though they knew his prog­no­sis was poor they still hoped and prayed for the best.Three of the sur­viv­ing ba­bies are feed­ing ful­ly on their own–feed­ing un­til they are full–and two more were sched­uled to be­gin yes­ter­day.The ba­bies, first sex­tu­plets in T&T and the Caribbean, were born to par­ents Kieron Cum­mings and Pe­tra Lee Foon at 31 weeks ges­ta­tion, on March 4.It took a team of 18 doc­tors three min­utes to de­liv­er the ba­bies by cae­sare­an sec­tion. The in­fants were im­me­di­ate­ly placed in the Neo-Na­tal In­ten­sive Care Unit at the hos­pi­tal.

Lee Foon re­mained at the hos­pi­tal un­til March 9, when she was al­lowed to go home.In a T&T Guardian in­ter­view on March 10, Dr Afraz Ali, an ob­ste­tri­cian/ gy­nae­col­o­gist who had been part of the team to de­liv­er the ba­bies, said the in­fants would need to be care­ful­ly mon­i­tored and ob­served up un­til the age of five.He said res­pi­ra­to­ry and de­vel­op­men­tal prob­lems are com­mon with pre­ma­ture births up un­til the age of five.

"Be­cause of the stress­es the ba­bies un­der­go im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter de­liv­ery in terms of neona­tal care...re­mem­ber a big part of that is res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems and with res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems you have to be con­cerned about how the brain is af­fect­ed by it and as a re­sult of that you have to mon­i­tor these ba­bies for pro­longed pe­ri­ods of time," he said.He told the T&T Guardian it could take up to three to five years to see how the ba­bies de­vel­op and how they achieve the mile­stones a full-term ba­by would achieve.

Pres­i­dent of the Med­ical Prac­ti­tion­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (MPATT) She­henaz Mo­hammed yes­ter­day con­firmed that one of the ba­bies had passed away.Mo­hammed of­fered con­do­lences to the par­ents and grand­par­ents of the six ba­bies. She said the oth­er ba­bies were do­ing well.Asked when they would be al­lowed to go home to their par­ents, she could not give a def­i­nite date."Pre­ma­ture ba­bies can be dis­charged af­ter they have passed the 34-week pe­ri­od."

The birth of the T&T sex­tu­plets brought to 181 the num­ber known to have been born in the world.

Ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia, the first sur­viv­ing set of sex­tu­plets was born in South Africa in 1974. The first sur­viv­ing set of sex­tu­plets from the Unit­ed States were the Dil­ley sex­tu­plets born in 1993, of­ten re­ferred to as the "Dil­ley Six Pack."Very few in­ci­dences of spon­ta­neous con­cep­tion of sex­tu­plets have been re­port­ed–near­ly all of the sex­tu­plet births in the last 30 years were the re­sult of fer­til­i­ty en­hance­ments such as ovu­la­tion-stim­u­lat­ing drugs.

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Health risks for mul­ti­ple ba­bies

The greater the num­ber of ba­bies in the womb, the small­er they will be and low birth­weight brings a whole range of prob­lems.Res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­tress syn­drome is com­mon. Tiny ba­bies need treat­ment with sur­fac­tant, a pro­tein that �pre­vents the alve­oli–tiny air sacs in the lungs–from col­laps­ing. They al­so need oxy­gen and a ven­ti­la­tor to breathe un­til their lungs are ma­ture enough to take over the job.

Bleed­ing in the brain in the first days of life can hap­pen, al­though most bleeds are mild and re­solve them­selves with few or no last­ing prob­lems. If they are more se­vere, they can put pres­sure on the brain, which sur­geons re­lieve by in­sert­ing a tube to drain off flu­id.

Heart prob­lems are com­mon in tiny pre­ma­ture ba­bies. A large artery called the duc­tus ar­te­rio­sus, which ex­ists to al­low blood to by­pass the lungs while the ba­by is in the womb, can fail to close af­ter birth.A prob­lem with the in­testines called necro­tis­ing en­te­ro­col­i­tis can de­vel­op in the weeks af­ter birth. It makes it hard to feed the ba­by and caus­es swelling of the ab­domen. Ba­bies are giv­en an­tibi­otics and fed through an IV.