MILAN - A Sicilian woman yesterday gave birth three months early to the rest of a set of octuplets conceived with the help of fertility drugs. Seven of the babies survived.
Mariella Mazzara, aged 31, went into labour on Thursday, delivering a girl. Doctors had been struggling since then to delay additional deliveries in hopes of giving the foetuses' organs more time to develop.
In spite of the doctors' efforts, Mazzara went into labour again yesterday, giving birth to a boy. Doctors delivered the remaining six babies by Caesarean section.
One of the boys died.
All the babies weighed about 500g. The four girls and three boys who survived their premature birth were in neonatal intensive care in Milan last night.
Mazzara, of Trapani, Sicily, and husband Giovanni Pierrera, 32, turned to fertility drugs after trying for six years to have a child. She had just entered her 25th week of pregnancy when the first child was born.
Some fertility experts have been critical of the treatment, saying more careful monitoring might have prevented Mazzara from conceiving such a large number of babies. The family reportedly rejected aborting some of the foetuses to enhance survival chances for the rest.
The prognosis for infants born so early is not good, experts say. But a Houston family which had octuplets conceived through fertility treatment and born three months early celebrated the first birthday of the seven survivors last December.
The largest multiple birth on record is nine babies born in Sydney in 1971, but none lived beyond six days.
In 1985, a 25-year-old Turkish woman who had been taking fertility drugs gave birth to octuplets, but all died within three days.
In August 1996, a 32-year-old British woman, Mandy Allwood, carried eight babies and rejected medical advice to abort some of them. All of them died.
Mazzara's family are believed to have given exclusive picture rights to the octuplets to an Italian weekly and a German television station.
- AGENCIES
Sicilian woman gives birth to eight babies
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.