There was a team of 24 people in the operating room and another 50 in recovery. All five babies were born via Caesarean section between 11:01 and 11:04 a.m. Wednesday morning, when she was 32 weeks and five days pregnant. Quoting her husband, Meryl said giving birth to quints at 32 weeks instead of 28 weeks was like the difference between a "fender-bender and a front-end collision." She'd take the fender-bender. Once Matthews gave birth, Meryl was even more uncomfortable - both ready to hold her babies in her arms and desperate to keep them inside just a few weeks longer. (John actually took all the seats out of his van and put a mattress in back when Meryl was 23 weeks pregnant, so he could drive her from their home in Southern California to Mesa, Ariz.)īoth moms were nurses both sought fertility treatment and both gave birth to five babies with September birthdays.
Both families temporarily moved to Arizona to keep Elliott as their doctor when he relocated to Banner Desert Medical Center in July.
He'd also delivered 12 sets of quintuplets when Ferraro met him.Īnd this month, he delivered two more sets of quints: one to Meryl and one to Carmen Matthews, who met Meryl in July and gave birth a few weeks before Meryl did. He delivered his first quadruplets in 1984, and has delivered 99 sets in all. John Elliott, they found out he lived 45 minutes from their California home and gave him a call.Įlliott specialized in high-risk pregnancies. After John read a chapter in a book about multiple births written by Dr. Full-term pregnancy is typically about 38 weeks.Įarly on, doctors told her to reduce the number of fetuses she was carrying, but Ferraro and her husband, John, decided they couldn't bear to choose which babies would live and which would die. So it was crucial for Ferraro to keep her babies inside as long as possible to give their tiny bodies more time to grow. Most quintuplets are born between 24 and 28 weeks into pregnancy, sometimes causing them to be born with underdeveloped lungs, cerebral palsy, and sight and hearing deficiencies. "If you decide this is what you want, you've got to give it all you have." As her belly grew (somewhat lopsided, by the way), she said he began to see making her pregnancy last 34 weeks as her own sort of Olympic challenge. 2, 2012— - When Meryl Ferraro was on bed rest for two months, awaiting the birth of her quintuplets in an Arizona hospital, the Olympics were on television almost constantly during the first three weeks of her stay.
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