8 Babies Born to Stunned California Parents

Doctors in Bellflower California methodically delivered a mother's seven babies, five boys and two girls, just as they had repeatedly rehearsed.
Then came the eighth.
The surprising sixth boy and eighth child made Monday's mass birth not just remarkable but historic.
"It is quite easy to miss a baby when you're anticipating seven," said Dr. Harold Henry, chief of maternal and fetal medicine and one of 46 doctors, nurses and assistants who delivered the children by Caesarean section at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center. "Ultrasound doesn't show you everything."
Just five minutes after the first birth, the unexpected eighth baby came out at 10:48 a.m.
"My eyes were wide," Dr. Karen Maples said.
It was just the second live octuplets birth in U.S. history.
"The babies are all doing well, and the mom is also doing well," Henry said. "There were no complications from the surgery to the best of my knowledge."
Hospital officials would not release the mother's name nor say whether she had used fertility drugs.
They did say she planned to breast feed all the children.
"She's a very strong woman, so she probably will be able to handle all eight babies," said Dr. Mandhir Gupta, a neo-natologist who cared for the infants.
The mother checked into the hospital in her 23rd week of pregnancy and gave birth seven weeks later. The babies — dubbed with the letters A-through-H — will probably remain in the hospital for at least two months and the mother should be released in a week, Maples said.
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Octuplets? No, that's a litter!

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