View larger image A woman enters BC Women's Hospital in Vancouver, B.C., Sunday, January 7, 2007. (Richard Lam / CP PHOTO)
Dr. Brian Lupton, chief of neo-natal care at B.C. Women's Hospital, right, speaks to reporters as Dr. Liz Whynot looks on during a news conference in Vancouver on Monday January 8, 2007 regarding the birth of sextuplets at the hospital this past weekend. (CP / Chuck Stoody)
Woman gives birth to sextuplets at B.C. hospital
CTV.ca News Staff
A woman has delivered sextuplets at a Vancouver hospital this weekend, a rare event believed to be a Canadian first, doctors have confirmed.
The four boys and two girls were delivered after just 25 weeks by C-section. Each weighs about 1.8 pounds, but a spokesperson at B.C. Women's Hospital said they are "in fair condition."
The parents are Jehovah's Witnesses and do not want to speak to the media about the delivery and have requested to remain anonymous.
"While they understand that there is a lot of public interest in the birth of their babies, they are feeling overwhelmed," said hospital president Dr. Liz Whynot.
One of the sextuplets was delivered at 8:30 p.m. Saturday night and the rest were born Sunday morning.
On average, babies born after 25 weeks gestation spend 100 days in neonatal intensive care, and about 80 per cent survive.
Dr. Timothy Rowe, who heads the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at the University of British Columbia, says the babies will likely have underdeveloped lungs and could even be blind.
Lynda Haddon, a multiple birth educator, said raising sextuplets will be a daunting challenge for the parents.
"There's a rollercoaster of emotions, from euphoria to fear," Haddon told CTV Newsnet.
"Then there's the logistics: how are they going to fit in my car? What am I going to do with baby sitters? Am I going to have a life? How will I pay for them?"
The B.C. Women's Hospital is the same one that delivered the conjoined twins of Vernon, B.C.'s Felicia Simms back in October. Her children left hospital just before Christmas.
In the modern era, most multiple births have been attributed to the use of fertility drugs. Without drugs, sextuplets occur only once in several billion births.
The Gilmour family of Saskatoon gave birth to quintuplets in 1999. Those children were conceived with the aid of fertility treatments. One child died in the womb, but the remaining five who were born survived despite arriving 11 weeks prematurely.
The Gilmour quintuplets were reportedly only the eighth set of quintuplets in Canada since the famous Dionne quintuplets, who were born in 1934 in northern Ontario, long before the advent of today's fertility drugs.
While the Dionne quintuplets were the first to have survived birth, their young lives became something of a freak show. The Ontario government seized them from their mother and put them in a special hospital where people could watch them play behind one-way glass.
Their mother fought for nine years to regain custody. The three surviving women received a $4-million settlement from the Ontario government in 1998 as compensation for their early mistreatment.
In 1974, sextuplets born in South Africa became the first to survive their infancy.
News of the B.C. sextuplets' birth came as another sextuplet, John Van Houten of Hamilton, Mich., celebrated his third birthday.
John's four brothers and sisters will have their birthdays on Jan. 16, while the youngest Van Houten sextuplet turns 3 a day later.
With a report by CTV's Keri Adams and files from The Canadian Press
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.