A Houston woman is the new mom of three girls and three boys on Monday, according to Texas Children’s Hospital.
Lauren Perkins was 30 weeks pregnant when she gave birth to sextuplets at 10:26 a.m. by C-section. The smallest of the six babies weighed 1 pound, 10 ounces at birth while the biggest was 2 pounds, 15 ounces.
Mom and her babies - the family has not released their names - are in stable condition, according to the family’s website.
On the website, Perkins and her husband, David, said they had tried for 18 months to get pregnant without success, and doctors weren't sure why they were having trouble. So the couple tried intra-uterine insemination and found out two weeks later that Lauren was pregnant. When she underwent an ultrasound examination it was apparent sextuplets were on the way.
A hospital spokeswoman said Tuesday that they didn’t have any updates on the family’s condition - although they're expected to hold a news conference in a few days.
The birth of five babies or more is extremely rare in the United States.
According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on 2009 births, (PDF) there were 80 cases that year, 95% of which were born before 32 weeks.
The report says the trend has been for fewer “triplet/+” births since the figure peaked in 1998 at 193 per 100,000 births. There were about 4.13 million births in 2009.
Heather Carroll, an Alabama woman gave birth to sextuplets - five girls and one boy - last Father’s Day.
Those births closely followed the births of three girls and three boys to a Pennsylvania couple, Stacey and Brendan Carey.
Filed under: Children's Health, Fertility, Parenting Tagged: Steve Almasy -- CNN
