The Honolulu Quintuplets Spent their First Christmas at Home

 

This October, quintuplets were born prematurely in a hospital in Honolulu. Contrary to what everybody expected, the Honolulu quintuplets spent their first Christmas at home, not in the hospital.

On October 10, one girl and four boys were born before expected and the doctors said that they would need to stay in the hospital for three months, until their lungs would be fully developed. On December 13, two of the babies were sent home and another one arrived on Monday. This Thursday though their family was finally complete, when the last two of the quintuplets were released from the hospital. According to Honolulu Star Advertiser, these are the first quintuplets to survive in Hawaii.

These are not the only children of the couple. The Dela Cruz family also has a two year old boy named Makaio. The boy was conceived with the help of in vitro fertilization. Some embryos were left by the couple for future children and in April they had two embryos transferred, in order to have another child. In the beginning they thought that they were going have twins. But then one of the two embryos split in half and later split in half again, which later formed four identical boys and one girl. And so the couple found out that the shocking news that five more babies were on the way. When they were born, the babies only weighed around 3 pounds each but they have grown since then and now weigh between 5 and 8 pounds.

The director of the neonatal care unit, Charles Neal, said that everybody in the prematurely born unit tried their best to ensure that the babies survive and develop normally. The couple said that the doctors and nurses are the mothers their babies knew until now.

Marcie and Ray DelA Cruz said that they didn’t expect this but that they feel blessed to have the five babies alive and healthy. The mother of six revealed that having Kapena, Kaolu,Kupono,Keahi and Kamalii home for Christmas is the best gift they could have gotten.

In 2005, the National Vital Statistics reported that 68 births of quintuplets occurred in the United States. The spontaneous conception of quintuplets is extremely rare, with 1 in 60 million births. Most quintuplet births result due to assisted reproductive techniques such as in vitro fertilization or fertility enhancing drugs. Quintuplets don’t always share the same birthday because of delayed interval delivery which can cause babies to be born from days to weeks apart.

As the Honolulu quintuplets spent their first Christmas at home, we can say that a Christmas miracle happened indeed.

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