Meryl Ferraro was on bed rest for two months in an Arizona hospital, awaiting the birth of her quintuplets, and the Olympics were on practically nonstop during the first three weeks of her stay. She stated he began to regard making her pregnancy last 34 weeks as her own kind of Olympic task as her belly swelled (rather asymmetrical, by the way).
“It’s just a matter of willpower,” Ferraro added. “If you decide this is what you want, you must give it everything you’ve got.”
The majority of quintuplets are born between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy, which can result in undeveloped lungs, cerebral palsy, and vision and hearing problems. Ferraro needed to keep her babies inside for as long as possible in order for their small bodies to grow. A typical full-term pregnancy lasts around 38 weeks.
Doctors advised Ferraro to minimize the number of fetuses she was carrying early on, but she and her husband, John, decided they couldn’t stomach having to select which babies would live or die. They found out Dr. John Elliott resided 45 minutes from their California home after John read a chapter in a book about multiple births published by him and called him.
Elliott was an expert in high-risk pregnancy. He gave birth to his first quadruplets in 1984 and has since delivered a total of 99 sets. When Ferraro met him, he’d also just delivered 12 sets of quintuplets.
He also gave birth to two more quints this month, one to Meryl and the other to Carmen Matthews, who met Meryl in July and gave birth a few weeks before Meryl. When Elliott transferred to Banner Desert Medical Center in July, both families temporarily migrated to Arizona to maintain him as their doctor. (When Meryl was 23 weeks pregnant, John removed all of the seats from his van and replaced them with a mattress in the back so he could drive her from their home in Southern California to Mesa, Arizona.)
Both mothers were nurses who sought fertility treatment and gave birth to five children in September.
Meryl was much more uncomfortable after Matthews gave delivery, wanting to hug her babies in her arms but also wanting to keep them within for a few weeks longer. Meryl compared giving birth to quints at 32 weeks instead of 28 weeks to the difference between a “fender-bender and a front-end collision,” according to her husband. She’d rather be in a fender-bender.
She was 32 weeks and five days pregnant when her water broke at 5:15 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Between 11:01 and 11:04 a.m., all five babies were delivered through Caesarean section. A total of 24 people worked in the operating room, with another 50 in recovery.
Meryl said the first thing she felt when she went into labor and realized she wouldn’t make it to 34 weeks was fury. 33 weeks was only worth a silver medal in the Olympic challenge she concocted, and she wanted to beat the 34-week threshold she’d envisaged as gold.
“I was furious because I had set a goal for myself and didn’t achieve it,” she explained.
But in the days after giving birth, she’s gotten to know the three girls and two boys who had been nagging her from within for so long. She already knows Gabby can sleep through anything, Addy (the tiniest) is a fighter, and Riley (the oldest) is a slacker, according to her. Riley is referred to as “my chubber” by her.
Meryl Ferraro, 39, and her quintuplet Addy, who was born five days ago.
Meryl can return to her temporary residence in Arizona today, despite the fact that her tummy hurts like she’s done “1,000 crunches” and she’s still getting used to walking after two months in bed. The quints, meanwhile, will remain in the NICU until they are ready to depart.
Carmen Matthews, who gave birth on Sept. 6, is always one step ahead of the game, waiting for just one more kid to leave the NICU before she and her family can return to North Carolina.
Matthews stated, “I’m very delighted we did what we did.” “We could not have wished for a more favorable outcome. For all of us, it was a huge sacrifice, but it was well worth it.”
A few of Matthews’ new infants cooed in the background as she spoke on the phone.
Elliott believes that having a strategy and maintaining a happy mindset are crucial factors in his patients’ success. It was reassuring for the Ferraros and Matthews to have each other.
“I think seeing someone else going through the same situation, the same concerns, the same questions,” Elliot said, “helped both of these families.” “It was unique. It simply does not happen.”
Because he utilizes magnesium sulfate to prolong pregnancies longer than other doctors, Elliott claims he can persuade his patients to carry their high-risk pregnancies for four to six weeks longer than average. The mother may experience discomfort after taking the drug, such as chest pain, muscle weakness, impaired vision, and headaches, but these symptoms normally subside after three days, and the medication can extend the gestation duration by months.
“Most people are unaware of this because they are terrified of traveling for three to four days,” he explained. “You’re going to fail if you don’t know how to treat it aggressively.”
Despite the fact that the babies are doing well, Dr. James Goldfarb, the director of the University Hospital’s reproductive department in Cleveland, advises against having more than one child as a result of fertility treatments due to health concerns. He believes that fertility doctors’ main focus should be to help their patients create healthy families, rather than just getting them pregnant. He claims that triplets are 20 times more probable than singletons to be born with cerebral palsy.
Doctors and patients, according to Goldfarb, should be cautious while giving fertility shots. He suggested that they only implant one embryo at a time. Doctors must also keep in mind that some patients are unable to lower their number of embryos for moral or religious grounds, according to him.
“Patients come to us desperate to get pregnant, and the last thing on their minds is getting overly pregnant,” Goldfarb explained.