In Rare Event Two Mothers Give Birth To Sextuplets On Same Day

June 17, 2007 — -- It is a rare event in the United States, indeed in the world -- the birth of sextuplets. Out of more than 4 million births in the U.S. in 2005, just 85 deliveries involved five or more babies.

Making the occasion rarer recently was the birth of two sets of sextuplets just 10 hours apart.

On June 12, Ryan and Brianna Morrison of Minnesota became parents of four boys and two girls, born after just 22 weeks in their mother's womb.

And in Phoenix that same day, after just 30 weeks of pregnancy, Jenny Mashe gave birth to three boys and three girls.

The joy of the birth announcements, however, was tempered with news that three of the sextuplets born prematurely to the Morrisons died. Lincoln Sean Morrison died Friday, following the deaths of two of his brothers, Tryg and Bennet, on Wednesday.

The three surviving babies remain in critical condition in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. Hospital officials say no further information will be released. The babies' weighed between only 11 ounces and 1.3 pounds at birth.

An "extremely premature" infant -- 22 weeks or less-- has about a 1 percent to 10 percent chance of surviving according to the American Medical Association. At 25 weeks of gestation, the odds increase to between 50 percent and 80 percent.

If a fetus can remain in utero until 30 weeks, the odds of surviving increase dramatically -- to better than 90 percent.

"There's a small amount of room for hope that at least one of the babies might survive," University of Iowa pediatrics professor Dr. Edward F. Bell told the Minnesota Star Tribune. "There's a handful of 22-week old babies have survived, but it is a rare event."

Both sextuplets mothers consulted fertility doctors to become pregnant.

Brianna Morrison and her husband, both 24, reportedly spent more than a year trying to conceive and then began taking fertility drugs, in particular Follistim, which cases the ovary to produce an egg. In some women, the ovaries release many eggs at one time in an "over response" to the drug.