Paediatric concern: Newborn quadruplets under intensive care

Premature babies being fed through NG tubes, kept under hygienically suitable conditions.

RAWALPINDI:

The newborn quadruplets at Holy Family Hospital (HFH) are “still not out of danger” and are being kept under intensive care. The three boys and a girl were born to Naheed Bibi, a 30- year old resident of Islampura, Rawalpindi in HFH on Thursday.

Talking to this reporter on Sunday, hospital officials and doctors said that as the babies are unable to suckle, they are being kept at the paediatrics ward’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) under level-III care and are being constantly monitored by doctors.

“The temperature and the blood pressure of the newborns are being continuously monitored as they are not out of danger yet,” said the attending doctor, Dr Zafar. As the babies are premature, they are not in the position to resist pathogens normally and are highly susceptible to infections. Hence, it is necessary to keep the babies in hygienically suitable conditions, he said.

Dr Zafar said that the babies are being provided fluids through an NG tube to keep them growing. Each baby weights around 1 kilogramme, while the minimum weight of a normal newborn is 2.5 kg. He said that it is too early to observe an increase in the weight of the babies or estimate how long it will take for them to become stable, as they are only three days old.

HFH Gynecology Department Head Professor Fahida Shaheen said the babies’ mother is doing well and hopeful that her children will soon get out of danger. She said that the birth of quadruplets is not unusual and the hospital has received many cases of birth of triplets and more in the recent years. She attributed the increasing cases of birth of more than one child to a woman to overdose of certain drugs before pregnancy.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 20^th, 2011.