Quintuplets delivered on mom's birthday
A rare set of quintuplets arrived last week, beating the stroke of midnight to share a birthday with their mother.
Katie Schaftlein gave birth to four girls and one boy – Savannah, Sadie, Sofia, Scarlett and Lucas – on November 11 at UK HealthCare in Lexington, Kentucky.
The babies were born prematurely at 29 weeks, but all five are healthy.
At a press conference on Thursday, Schaftlein thanked the team of specialists who helped deliver her children.
“This was a very scary time for us,” she said.
Her husband Lucas added: “Everything was so well planned and everything was so calm.”
It took a whole team to bring them safely into the world. Each baby had its own attending neonatologist, said Dr. Peter Giannone, chief of neonatology at Kentucky Children’s Hospital.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were only 47 deliveries of quintuplets or more reported nationally in 2014.
“They’re quite uncommon,” Dr. Wendy Hansen, chief of UK Women’s Health Obstetrics and Gynecology, said at the press conference.
Katie, who just turned 26, said she had always wanted five children, although her husband thought they might stop at three or four.
In September, after flying to Japan on a business trip, Lucas learned his wife had been admitted to the hospital while he was mid-flight. He booked a flight back to the U.S. as soon as possible.
“I left her that day and kissed her goodbye, and three four hours later she was in the hospital,” he recalled.
Katie remained in the hospital on bed rest for two months before delivering the babies last week, about two and a half months early.
Hansen, who said it was her first time delivering quintuplets, said all five babies arrived within four minutes. The last baby came at 11:56 p.m.
“We were worried because we didn’t want them to have two different birthdays,” Katie said. “Everyone cheered, and at that point I was like, ‘OK, they are out.’”
Despite being born prematurely, Giannone said the babies are healthy. “Luckily, they all arrived as healthy as we could hope for for 29-week babies and they’re and they’re all doing very, very well right now,” he said.
