It's been said that births like this only occur once every 480 years! One couple in the Czech Republic has much to be thankful for as they welcome new babies into the world. Yes, BABIES as in multiple!
The couple, Alexandra and Antonin, knew they had one child already and they were beyond thrilled when they learned that a new family member was on the way.
Both had a history of twins in their families, and so they were overjoyed to find that they would carry on the tradition. But a month later, they discovered a secret about the new additions to the family that would completely change their world around.
The Kinova's from the Czech town of Milovice were looking forward to welcoming a new family member into their home, but they soon learned that Alexandra was pregnant with not just one child, but two! The couple was more than excited after hearing the news, and they began to prepare themselves for the transition of being a family of five.
However, almost immediately, the doctor asked the couple is he could see them again, to re-diagnose.
What they were about to find out was something they would never expect in a million years.
With mixed emotion and nervousness, the doctor decided to show them the ultrasound again! When Alexandra looks, sobs and cries were the only response she could muster from the shocking news the doctor gave her.
At first, the doctors announced that Alexandra was carrying twins, but then a few moments later, they informed Alexandra that it was not just two, but three babies! She was having triplets!
After looking even harder, Doctors then confirmed that this news was shattered as well as they realized what had actually happened..
After much debate, and re-examination, the doctors finally concluded that Alexandra was actually carrying four fetuses in her womb instead of three! It was incredible for the news to go from twins to quadruplets in a mere matter of hours. However, it didn't just stop there.
Upon scrutinizing the ultrasound in further detail, they discovered something of an incredible nature! Alexandra was carrying an astounding five babies!
Alexandra said, "When we finally found a fifth head, I started to cry." The chances of this occurring were one in seven million, and Alexandra couldn't wait until she could breastfeed them all. The family was unable to know what the sex of each baby was, as two of them were hidden from the ultrasound.
All the family could do at this time was sit and wait.
The family took the news in stride, seeing as Kinova planned to breastfeed all five of her blessings. "The first child I nursed for almost a year and a half and I want to breastfeed now. 'While I know that some will be on artificial nutrition.
I look very much forward to seeing how they will look. It's a great charm but we cannot see anything properly-only a head and legs."
When the time came, there were almost 40 people in the delivery room.
The head doctor of the neonatal unit said that there were no complications with the births and the family welcomed four new baby boys into the world along with one girl.
The five-times blessed father, Antonin, unfortunately almost missed big event of welcoming the quintuplets into the world, since he was caught on a late train back into town. But, he eventually got to the hospital, and managed to greet his babies in the delivery room.
"I cried all the way there because I was sure I would miss it," said the father.
The babies were all born at the Prague Institute for Care of Mother and Child. When born, mom and the babies were placed in intensive care in good condition, and the babies were given a 95% chance of growing up completely healthy.
The family decided to name the boys Deniel, Michael, Alex and Martin and name the girl Tereza.
Doctor Alena Mechurova said, "In our country (birth) statistics have been recorded since 1949 and there's no mention of quintuplets.
In the Czech Republic, quintuplets are born on average once every 480 years." This birth was a historical day seeing as this birth was the first recorded birth in quintuplets.
Quintuplets can be fraternal, identical, or a combination of both.
Multi fraternal quintuplets can occur from five different egg and sperm combinations. Identical multiples are the result of a fertilized egg that splits into two or more embryos.
It is possible for an embryo split to occur more than once, producing identical triplets or an even rarer set of identical quintuplets. Fully identical quintuplets are incredibly rare, and it is difficult to assess the odds. Quintuplets can be all male, all female, or a combination of both.
Identical quintuplets will always be of the same gender, while most quintuplets are a combination of boys and girls; all male or all female quintuplets are very rare.
The first set of all female quintuplets were born in the United States in 2015. In 2008, a Polish woman gave birth to a set of "probably identical" girls without the aid of fertility drugs.
In 2005, the National Vital Statistics report for the United States reported the birth of 68 quintuplets and higher order multiples. This number includes the possible birth of sextuplets, septuplets or more, so it is not determined exactly how many of those births were quintuplets.
The Dionne quintuplets were born May 28th, 1934, and they are the first quintuplets known to have survived their infancy. The sisters were born in Canada, and all five survived to adulthood.
They were born two months premature, and after only four months with their family, they were made wards of the state for the next nine years under the Dionne Quintuplets' Guardianship Act, 1935.
The Ontario provincial government and those around them began to make profits by making them a significant tourist attraction.
Although five-seat quintuplet strollers are available and certainly convenient, they're incredibly pricey. The most prevalent brand is Runabout, a company that crafts multi-seat tandem strollers with hand-welded steel frames. These strollers are very expensive, costing almost $1000.
It's also been recorded that parents of quintuplets will change more than 35,000 diapers before their kids are potty trained.
The conception of quintuplets is so rare, in fact, the average estimate is 1 in about 60 million births. Most recent quintuplet births are the result of assisted reproduction techniques like fertility enhancing drugs or in-vitro fertilization.
Quintuplets don't always share the same birthdate either. A delayed interval delivery may mean that individual babies are born days or even weeks apart.
The average length of a quintuplet pregnancy is 29 weeks, as opposed to 40 weeks for a full-term baby.
The longest length of a quintuplet pregnancy was about 35 weeks, which is a record held by the mother of the Stanford quintuplets in Rhode Island. Many mothers of quintuplets gain more than fifty pounds during their pregnancy and will require a cervical cerclage, a procedure in which the cervix has to be sewn shut to prevent preterm labor.
Almost all quintuplet pregnancies result in a cesarean delivery. The average birth weight of a quintuplet is 2 pounds, 12 ounces, and most quintuplets receive medical care in a hospital until they reach their original birth date.
The Wilkinson quintuplets weighed more than 21 pounds combined when they were born at 34 weeks in 2007. The heaviest quintuplet births on record, according to the Guinness Book of World Records was 25 pounds combined, attributed to two mothers, Liu Saulian, and Mrs.
Kamalammal.
A 2004 television show, "Quintuplets" starring Andy Richter and Rebecca Creskoff as parents of teenage quints.
The 1994 novel, Feather Crowns, is about a young Kentucky farm couple who gives birth to quintuplets.
If you are having quintuplets, it is recommended for families to seek supporting advice from other families in the same situation. The organizations that offer resources and assistance are Mothers of Supertwins, Canada's Higher Order multiples Support Network, Australian Multiple Birth Association, New Zealand Multiple Birth Association, Twins and Multiple Birth Association.
The Diligenti Quintuplets were born in Argentina in 1943. Their parents, Italian immigrant Franco Diligenti, and opera singer Ana Aversano kept the event a secret, and they even went as far as registering the births in different districts. They were determined to shield their children from the intense publicity surrounding the Dionne Quintuplets, and they were mostly successful.
These days, they are the world's oldest complete set of quintuplets.
The Fiscer Quintuplets were the first known set of surviving quintuplets in the United States (although that ended up changing). The four girls and a boy were born on September 14th, 1963 in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Their childhood was documented in magazines and in collectible kitsch, such as dolls and calendars.
All of the siblings to this day reside in the Aberdeen area.
As we mentioned, the Dionne quintuplets were the first in the world to be documented together and survived infancy. When the girls were little, they played on their own in a private playground. However, when that playground opened to the public in 1936, over 5,000 people came over to watch the girls. The New York Post wrote, “Quint-mania” was big business, bringing in an estimated 3 million visitors in the 1930s.
More people visited “Quintland,” as their compound in a small city outside Ontario was called, than Niagara Falls. Their own doctor called them the “eighth wonder of the world.”
These rare births are hard to come by, so when we hear about them we are incredibly interested.
Some trivia facts about quints are that the first set of quints were born in 1875, were a set of all boys and that they sadly did not survive. Another interesting fact is that Melvin Mora, a baseball player, is a dad of quintuplets who were born in 2001; they are three girls and two boys.
The Busby quints inspired the TLC show 'Outnumbered'. The five girls were welcomed into the world and into their family to joint their parents and older sister, Blayke. The girl's delivery took only minutes!
They were born on April 8, 2015 in Houston, Texas. The cesarian section that mom Danielle got took a mere four minutes and the girls were brought out one by one with the whole ordeal being over in minutes.
There are identical twin girls out of the five quints - Olivia and Ava! The rest of the brood are a part of the quints group but are not identical to one another. These two are two peas in a pod (almost literally) and are as rare as a quints birth is to begin with.
The quints' parents say that every girl has her own unique personality. In addition to Olivia and Ava, there is Hazel, Riley, and Parker.
The issue of postpartum depression is very real and very important to take care of. Adam suffered from it after the birth of the quints, saying, “After coming face-to-face with postpartum depression following the birth of our five daughters, I quickly learned that this is a very real struggle that dads all around the world go through, yet you rarely ever hear it talked about." "I’d be doing an extreme disservice to our fans if I hid this from the public and wasn’t honest with them,” he explained of his decision to share his diagnosis. “I have a big responsibility with the platform that I've been given.
I want to make sure I bring awareness to the realities of postpartum depression and other mental health issues ... because I know I’m not alone and I want others to know they aren’t, either.”
One of the quints, Hazel, was born with an eye condition that required surgery when she was a baby. The condition is called nystagmus and could have blinded Hazel. "She could lose her eye sight,” Danielle said.
“This surgery fix is not even about her vision — it’s more so to correct the placement of where her eye goes to focus better so she doesn’t have to turn her neck, which is a huge deal.”
The Busby family started out on TLC but now use their blog to keep their fans updated about their family, with a specific focus on their quints. This rare birth, whether natural or not, is yet another example of how incredible the human body is and how awesome nature can be.
Quints are rare, but Alexandra Kinova's story is the rarest of them all by far!
It is not every day that five babies are born at the same time and are genetically siblings.
Quints, as we mentioned, are incredibly rare and even more so when they are conceived naturally.
Families with quints usually have older siblings for those five because they did not plan on having as many as they ended up with, not to say that they are not completely thrilled with their grown family.
It goes without saying that five babies are attention grabbers and that the public will have interest in their birth since it is not something you see every day.
Just as much as the public has an interest in the quints, the medical community also has one. Five babies in the same stomach are a risk to the mother and the babies as well.
A safe delivery is just as important as the development of the babies.
The best part for the social lives of the quints is that they have each other to grow with, and will be raised to share and socialize.
This is very important for child development.
In 2018, Jamie Scott gave birth to quints in Utah. In a statement she said, “They might be tiny,” says Jamie Scott, now a mom of seven, “but they are mighty. And perfect.
We are so blessed to have these children. They are our little miracles.”
The father said, “We said many prayers,” says Skyler. “They were answered the day we found Dr.
Elliott. We had a long, personal consultation over the phone with him and felt confident Jamie could do this with his help.”
There is no single community, religion, race, or ethnicity that sees more quints than others.