Little hope for tiny octuplets

Press, 18 August 1979, Page 8

Little hope for tiny octuplets

NZPA-Reuter Naples Five of the seven surviving day-old octuplets born to a woman in Naples were given little chance of life yesterday, because they were so small, but an attending physician said there was some hope for the two largest infants. The mother, Pasqualina Chianese, aged 29, who gave birth to sextuplets three years ago and lost them all, was reported to be in satisfactory condition physically, but despondent that the same thing might happen again. “This time when they told me there were eight, I felt pain rather than joy,” said the father, Stefano, an insurance-company employee.

“I beget 14 children and maybe none of them survives. Pasqualina and 1 desperately want a baby, a good and healthy one, not all these to-j gether.”

Mrs Chianese, who had been taking fertility drugs for years, gave birth on Thursday to five girls and three boys. The babies were two months premature and ranged in weight from o.6kg to I.6kg. The smallest, a girl, died 10 hours later. The babies were delivered at the Hospital of the Incurable in 20 minutes by Dr Salvatore Scala, assisted by three nurses. Quadruplets had been expected, and when eight arrived some had to be rushed to incubators in other hospitals. "Everybody in the delivery room w'as so convinced that four were coming,” said Dr Scala, “You can hardly imagine the surprise of Mrs Chianese and everybody else when the number kept increasing .. . They were so tiny that the mother hardly felt any pain.”