Babies galore: Good things come in quartets
Electrician from Chakwal, Tauqeer Khan, happy as his wife is doing fine.
RAWALPINDI:
In a rarity of sorts, a woman from Chakwal gave birth to four baby girls at Holy Family Hospital on Sunday evening.
Najma Begum, 38, gave birth to the quadruplets at the Gynaecology Ward after her husband, Tauqeer Khan, brought her to the city for the delivery.
“I am happy to have had four girls and especially because my wife is doing fine,” said Khan.
However, with two girls and a boy already at home, the father of seven, who is an electrician, lamented that the medicines and different medical tests required are too expensive for him.
A doctor attending to the quadruplets said that the babies were being kept at the intensive care unit (ICU) by the Paediatric Ward as they were born underweight. All weigh less than one kilogram, whereas a normal child should weigh at least 2.5 kg at the time of birth, a doctor said.
Commenting on the birth of quadruplets, Dr Nasira Chaudhry, a gynaecologist at HFH, said the major cause of multiple births was overdosing on fertility medicines.
Talking to The Express Tribune, she said such cases needed immense care as the births are often premature. The temperature and the blood pressure of the children have to be continuously monitored by the duty doctors, she said.
“The kids are highly susceptible to different kinds of infections, as a premature baby is unable to resist infections as well as a full-term baby, the doctor said.
“The kids are being provided different fluids through nasogastric tubes to keep them growing,” said a lady doctor who was attending the babies.
The doctor further said it was too early to observe any increase in the weight of the children as they were only two days old, while adding that it could not be said with any certainty how long the babies would take to get to normal health and size.
Dr Nasira further said that if the birth was without complications, the mother would recover soon and would be able to take care of her babies.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 11th, 2012.
In a rarity of sorts, a woman from Chakwal gave birth to four baby girls at Holy Family Hospital on Sunday evening.
Najma Begum, 38, gave birth to the quadruplets at the Gynaecology Ward after her husband, Tauqeer Khan, brought her to the city for the delivery.
“I am happy to have had four girls and especially because my wife is doing fine,” said Khan.
However, with two girls and a boy already at home, the father of seven, who is an electrician, lamented that the medicines and different medical tests required are too expensive for him.
A doctor attending to the quadruplets said that the babies were being kept at the intensive care unit (ICU) by the Paediatric Ward as they were born underweight. All weigh less than one kilogram, whereas a normal child should weigh at least 2.5 kg at the time of birth, a doctor said.
Commenting on the birth of quadruplets, Dr Nasira Chaudhry, a gynaecologist at HFH, said the major cause of multiple births was overdosing on fertility medicines.
Talking to The Express Tribune, she said such cases needed immense care as the births are often premature. The temperature and the blood pressure of the children have to be continuously monitored by the duty doctors, she said.
“The kids are highly susceptible to different kinds of infections, as a premature baby is unable to resist infections as well as a full-term baby, the doctor said.
“The kids are being provided different fluids through nasogastric tubes to keep them growing,” said a lady doctor who was attending the babies.
The doctor further said it was too early to observe any increase in the weight of the children as they were only two days old, while adding that it could not be said with any certainty how long the babies would take to get to normal health and size.
Dr Nasira further said that if the birth was without complications, the mother would recover soon and would be able to take care of her babies.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 11th, 2012.