Six babies were born to one mom in a Vancouver hospital yesterday.
"They're very tiny but all six are alive," an informed source told The Province late last night. It is believed to be the first time sextuplets have been born in Canada.
The source said the four boys and two girls each weighed about 800 grams, or 1.8 pounds, and were born between 25 and 26 weeks into their mom's pregnancy.
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In general, babies born after 24 to 25 weeks of gestation are mature enough to survive, although they need a prolonged period of intensive care. Babies born premature have a higher risk of blindness, hearing problems and mental retardation than babies born full term.
"We used to say viability for the baby was 28 weeks," the source said. "But that's changed now. They have a good shot at survival but there's a chance some may not become fully functioning adults."
The mother had been at B.C. Women's Hospital and Health Centre for several weeks because doctors wanted to keep her stable to maximize the time the babies would stay in the womb.
The source said one of the babies was born naturally and the others by emergency caesarean section.
A hospital spokesman would not confirm or deny the births had taken place, citing a privacy policy.
The hospital was in the news a few weeks ago when rare conjoined twins were born there. They went home just before Christmas.
Among multiple births, six babies are extremely rare and until now, apparently unknown in Canada. Most multiple births, including the birth of Vancouver's sextuplets, are due to the use of fertility drugs.
There are just six sets of sextuplets living in the United States -- two sets in New York, and one each in Pennsylvania, Indiana, Alabama and Kansas.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2001 that the incidence of triplets and other high-number births declined for the first time in 1999, after the rate nearly doubled between 1990 and 1998.
Canada's most famous multiple births were the Dionne quintuplets, delivered by a country doctor in a rural Ontario farmhouse. They became international Depression-era celebrities, their every move recorded and written about.
They were the first-ever quints known to have survived infancy.
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Canada's first sextuplets, four boys and two girls, were born on the weekend of January 6th 2007 at the B.C. Women's hospital in Vancouver.  The first baby was delivered vaginally, while the following 5 had to be removed by emergency caesarean section. 

Dr. Liz Whynot, the Women's Hospital president said the first baby was delivered around 8:30 p.m. Saturday night, with the others born early Sunday.  Whynot said the parents "... understand there is a lot of public interest in the birth of their babies, they are feeling overwhelmed. So they're asking for their privacy to be respected."

The children weigh about 800 grams each. The mother was reported to be in her 25th week of pregnancy and the babies will require a period of time in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit as most pregnancies last 40 weeks.