Multiple Births (Part 1)

MAN has always been captivated by multiple births. Having 2,3,4, and now 8 in one pregnancy has captured a lot of attention.

Stories are plentiful and bookstores are abundant with novels about twins. Some were made into movies like the "The Corsican Brothers", "Scaramouche", and the double you pleasure, double your fun of the unusual pairing of Danny Devito and Arnold Schwarznegger as the Benedict twins. I can still remember the local cinema of Kambal Tuko. It was a slap sticky movie but as a young boy then, I enjoyed the movie laughing with the audience.

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Kambal Tuko was a story about the adventures of conjoined twins. It was probably patterned from the famous Siamese twins of Chang and Eng born in Bangkok, Thailand who joined the P.T. Barnum circus. Chang and Eng were boys, joined at the front chest at birth.

During their travels with the P.T. Barnum circus, they have consulted several doctors, who thought during that time that surgical separation would be fatal to both. As they stayed with the circus group, they married and have a total of twenty one children. They died at age 61 years within hours from each other. At autopsy, they were found to have separate vital organs and could have survived surgical separation.

Conjoined twins result from late or incomplete separation of the fertilized egg. They are always identical and mostly females. Only about 35 percent will live more than few days after birth and very few will survive up to adulthood. Prognosis will depend on the possibility and success of surgical separation which are often complicated, difficult, and delicate surgical procedure.

Although Chang and Eng were the first conjoined twins documented in 1811, there were much earlier records like the findings of the excavations from a Mexican town which have recorded clay sculptures that existed about 300 years ago with cranial duplications, double heads with separate necks on a single body.

There were other reports coming from England who have records of a two-headed boy born in AD 375 in the Castle of Emaus. The boy died at 2 years of age. Another report was about a woman with 2 heads, 4 arms and everything double down to the navel but only 2 legs and feet. They ate with 2 mouths and defecated with a single anus. It was said that when one of the heads laughed, ate and talked, the other would wept, fasted and kept silent. (J.A. Stockman, Yearbook of Peds2003).

Most pregnancies in humans result in the birth of one child. Multiple births result in more than one child in one pregnancy. The most common multiple births are two, known as twins. Three as triplets, four as quadruplets and five for quintuplets. It is calculated that births of twins occur in one out of 80 to 100 pregnancies, triplets in about one in 7000 to 10,000, quadruplets in one in 600,000 pregnancies, and quintuplets one in 47,000,000 pregnancies. Higher order multiple births such as six-(sextuplets), seven-(septuplets) and eight babies known as octuplets occur with much lower frequency. Much higher multiples such as nonuplets (nine), decaplets (ten) or even up to 12 or 15 were reported but none of the babies survived. Most were not born alive.

The higher order multiples who have survived became famous even for those who lived only for few days like the McCaughey septuplets and the Chukwu octuplets born in Texas with seven members of the set survived.

Some have attained celebrity status like the Dionne Sisters of Canada, the first quintuplets known to have survived infancy. The Gosselin sextuplets who were born in 2004 became famous, as part of the TV program of their parents Jon and Kate Gosselin entitled Jon and Kate plus 8 a highly rated television series.

In March 1952, the last surviving sextuplets born in Chicago, Illinois, during the US Civil war -- Mrs. Alinicia Bushnell Parker died at the age of 88 years.

Lately, the Suleman octuplets were born in January 2009 in California, USA which has generated much controversy. Will the Suleman octuplets receive assistance like what the Dionne quintuplets received in Canada?

The Dionne sisters were born in Ontario, Canada in March 1934 in a farmhouse of Oliva and Elizire Dionne who already had six other children. The Canadian Red Cross supported the family with incubators and nursing care of the babies. The community helped build the nursery, then build a house where the quintuplets were educated until they entered college.

When the quintuplets were born in 1934, the Ontario Legislature took charge and placed them under the care of the Province of Ontario, Canada to prevent unscrupulous people from taking advantage of their celebrity status.

One of the Dionne sisters became a nurse and spent several years in the convent. One of the quintoplets died in August 1954 of epileptic seizures. The others got married and had normal adult married lives. Again, will the Suleman octoplets receive the kind of assistance from the state and community of California the same as the Dionne sisters. Some people are now openly critical about these recent developments. (To be continued next week)