Expressing Breast Milk

Question by teejayniles:
Are you rejoicing or confused about the California Octuplets? (10 points for ideal answer)?
from Wikipedia article with ongoing updates on the Mom and Baby (California_Octuplets):

The California octuplets are human octuplets born on January 26, 2009, at the Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower, California.[1][2] This was only the second time ever that a full set of octuplets were born alive in the United States, coming eleven years after the 1998 births of the Chukwu octuplets in Texas. Multiple births are risky for both the mom and kids and are considered an undesirable outcome of reproductive technology.[3][4]

The delivery, via a pre-scheduled Caesarean section, involved 46 medical personnel, and was practiced twice beforehand.[2] Physicians anticipated only seven babies, so the eighth (“Baby H”, a boy) came as a surprise.[2] The infants (six boys and two girls) were born at 30½ weeks of gestation, approximately nine weeks premature. They ranged in weight from 1 pound and 8 ounces (0.68 kg) to 3 pounds and 4 ounces (1.47 kg).[5] The first baby was said to have come out “kicking and crying”. Born over the course of five minutes, all eight babies were immediately reported in stable condition, though two required breathing tubes and a ventilator and another required extra oxygen.[2]

The mom’s health and gestational status were followed since her first trimester.[2] However, she has asked that only limited information be released about the births,[1] so hospital officials have not released her name, nor have they said, for example, whether she undertook fertility treatments.[5] Medical experts immediately speculated that the woman probably received controlled ovarian hyperstimulation rather than in vitro fertilization, a more costly procedure which would have been less likely to produce octuplets.[6] The octuplets’ grandmother, however, would later confirm that an in vitro procedure had been used.[7]

After giving birth, the mom reportedly expressed the desire to breastfeed all eight infants.[5]

Two days after birth, five of the eight infants received their first tube-feeding of (donated) breast milk, even though one of the infants (“Baby F”, a boy who weighed 2 pounds 12 ounces (1.25 kg) at birth) rejected his first tube-feeding and was returned to intravenous feeding, as his stomach is yet unable to absorb breast milk. Three other infants have been fed intravenously since birth and are yet to receive their first tube-feeding.[8]

Three days after the octuplets’ birth, the octuplets’ grandmother, Angela Suleman, gave an on-the-record interview to the Los Angeles Times. After her daughter found out she was (apparently) pregnant with seven fetuses, she ruled out a selective reduction procedure: “What do you recommend she should have done? She refused to have them killed,” Suleman said. Her daughter never expected all eight embryos implanted in her would develop, she said.[7]

The octuplets’ mom already had six kids (ages 7, 6, 5, 3, with two-year-old twins) before seeking fertility treatment in 2008. She reportedly lives with her kids and mom on a “well-kept cul-de-sac in Whittier.”[7]

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