RI's first quintuplets in great shape

BANDUNG (JP): Indonesia's first quintuplets turned three days old yesterday and are doing great, to the delight of their parents and doctors at Borromeus Hospital, where they were born and are being treated.

"They are fine, and the mother is too. Even baby number four, who had a respiratory problem common to premature babies, is doing well," said hospital director Albert I. Hendarta.

The babies have also started to learn to feed from a bottle.

"We give them 10 bottle feeds a day; each one is as much as 12.5 cc," said one of the 14 nurses in the hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), where the babies are being cared for.

The babies have still to be named. The doctors and nurses who treat them call them all Adik, meaning little brother or sister.

"They have yet to receive an answer from the President and we would like to help," said Agnes Novijanti Puspita, the hospital's public relations manager.

On Wednesday the baby's father, Hastadi Wahyu, a 32-year old employee of the state-owned Telkom telecommunications company, said he would be grateful if President Soeharto named the babies.

The quintuplets, two boys and three girls, were born in the 32nd week of Ellydawaty's pregnancy at one-minute intervals during a 45-minute cesarean section operation.

Initially the team of doctors, obstetricians/gynecologists Eddy Haswidi and Duddy Natraprawira, pediatricians Kelly Surya Chandra and Sandjaja Soetadji, and anesthetists Marsudi Rasman and Tato Purwaganda, decided to perform a cesarean section on the mother, Ellydawaty, in the 34th week of pregnancy.

According to Albert, in cases of quintuplets it is very risky to wait for the babies to come out naturally.

"As they get bigger, they will not feel comfortable in their mother's womb. They will fight for space and food, and one or two of them will lose the competition and may die," Albert explained.

"It is safe to wait and let twins be born at the normal gestation age, but even with triplets, the risk is greater, let alone with quintuplets," Eddy Haswidi added.

The cesarean section was performed two days into Ellydawaty's 32nd week of pregnancy week because her water broke, said Albert.

According to Eddy, it is still too early to link the quintuplets with the fact that Ellydawaty had been treated with a certain brand of fertility pills.

"I have treated a lot of women with such fertility pills and they did not give birth to twins," Eddy said.

Meanwhile Sandjaja Soetadji, one of the two pediatricians in charge of the post-natal treatment, said he believed the babies had passed the worst.

"And as they are doing really well their treatment will not be too complicated or expensive," said Sandjaja, who once helped a quintuplet cesarean in Bonn, Germany.

The most common problem faced by premature babies is respiratory problem.

But the problem was reduced in Ellydawaty's case as Sandjaja gave her special pills to help the babies' lungs mature during her pregnancy.

Given the babies' healthy condition, Sandjaja is optimistic that the cost of treating the babies in the NICU, which is normally Rp 350,000 per baby per day, will be lower.

"They will have to remain in the NICU for at least two months," he said. (lem)