Overview
- The babies were delivered by cesarean at 28 weeks and four days on July 14 and remain in the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital neonatal intensive care unit with doctors reporting they are evolving favorably.
- Clinicians monitored the pregnancy as extremely high risk from about 10 weeks and kept the mother hospitalized from 25 weeks for continuous observation to manage complications tied to a shared placenta.
- Specialists say the four girls are monochorionic monozygotic quadruplets, meaning they came from a single fertilized egg that split into four embryos, a presentation estimated to occur about once in 15 million pregnancies.
- The delivery involved roughly 20 staff, including obstetricians, anesthetists, nurses and four dedicated neonatal teams, and the infants weighed between 1,025 grams and 1,151 grams at birth.
- The birth doubled the family’s children to eight, prompted a public fundraising drive that has raised more than US$25,000, and will likely require several weeks of NICU care and new logistical support for the parents.