Amazing Baby Stories!

I tend to be awed by baby stories that involve amazing circumstances or go against the odds in their situation. I have come across several lately, and thought I would post about them at once. I hope that you find them as interesting or inspiring as I do.

Hospital has 6 sets of twins in 32 hours
The Associated Press
Updated: 9:12 p.m. ET June 30, 2006

LANSING, Mich. - It all began with Chastity Keeler, who delivered twin boys. Keeler gave birth at 9:05 a.m. and 9:06 a.m. Tuesday. Over the next 32 hours, five more mothers gave birth to twins at Lansing's Sparrow Hospital.

Sparrow nurses, doctors and officials think that's probably a record for the hospital.

"We have a number of experienced nurses, and it's the first time within their collective memory that we've had six sets of twins born in such close proximity," Sparrow spokeswoman Nan Simons told the Lansing State Journal for a story Friday.

Keeler, of Jackson, said it's a story she'll tell her sons, Nick and Ty, as they grow up. "That was an extraordinary couple of days, and they were part of it," Keeler said. "They will forever be known in Sparrow history, and that's kind of cool."

Five sets of the twins were boys. The other two infants were girls.

"It's fun for Sparrow to mark a record like this," Simons said. "Six sets of twins: That's a lot of babies."

Mom has quadruplets, 3 years after triplets
Two boys, two girls were born without fertility drugs

LOS ANGELES - After delivering triplets three years ago, Angela Magdaleno thought she was done having babies. She was wrong four times over. Magdaleno gave birth to quadruplets on July 6 by Caesarean section. She now has nine children. The latest additions — two girls and two boys — were doing well Wednesday, while their mother, resting at home, said: “I’m happy because they’re healthy and so am I.”

Still, Magdaleno, 40, worried she might be overwhelmed with the work and sometimes struggles with mixed emotions about the future. “I don’t know if I’m sad or happy,” she said. “I’m happy but, I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Three years ago, Magdaleno gave birth to the triplets after undergoing in vitro fertilization. She said her husband wanted many children. After their birth, she thought she was done having babies. Then she got pregnant with the quadruplets. Magdaleno said she was shocked at the news. “She wanted to run,” said her husband, Afredo Anzaldo, 45, who lays carpet for a living.

Her doctor, Kathryn Shaw, a high-risk pregnancy specialist, said Magdaleno did well during the pregnancy and developed no complications. The babies were born at 32 weeks — well beyond the 29-week average for quadruplets. At birth, the girls were 4 pounds and 17 and 17.5 inches long; the boys about 3.5 pounds and 16 inches long.

One in 800,000
Shaw said the odds of conceiving quadruplets without fertility drugs are about one in 800,000. She’s seen only one other case of quadruplets being conceived without drugs — 18 years ago. Even more rare, the boys appear to be identical twins, according to their doctor, Soha Idriss, who expects the babies will join their mother at home in about eight weeks. As of Wednesday, their parents were still deciding what to name them.

When the quadruplets come home, Magdaleno will have help from two older daughters. All 11 family members will be living in a one-bedroom apartment in east Los Angeles. She said the living room is large, but she isn’t sure what the family will do when the babies get bigger. When the older girls are at school and her husband is at work, a friend has offered to help with the newborns and the triplets. “It’s a lot of work,” their mother said.

In the hospital, the babies sleep wrapped in blankets and attached to monitors and wires in separate incubators. They have full heads of straight dark hair and plump pink mouths. Anzaldo took the couple’s triplets to White Memorial Medical Center to meet their new brothers and sisters and to let Magdaleno get some rest at home. They have accepted their new brothers and sisters, Magdaleno said. But at first the triplets weren’t sure if they wanted the extra siblings, Anzaldo said. “They wanted one baby and no more,” he said.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Two wombs, three babies, one mom
First case of its kind, British hospital official says

The Associated Press
Updated: 12:21 p.m. ET Dec 22, 2006

LONDON - A woman with two wombs has given birth to triplets, in what is believed to the first case of its kind, a hospital official said Friday.

Hannah Kersey, 23, gave birth to three girls in September, said Richard Dottle, a spokesman for Southmead Hospital in Bristol where the babies were born. The children spent nine weeks in the hospital. The girls — identical twins delivered from one womb and a single baby from the other — were delivered by Caesarean section seven weeks early, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported.

Kersey and her partner Mick Faulkner said they were “over the moon” at how healthy and happy the girls were. “They are three lovely and incredible children, all with very different personalities,” the BBC quoted Kersey as saying.

“There haven’t been any similar account where three healthy babies are born of two wombs,” said Yakoub Khalaf, a consulting gynecologist at Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospital. He said that multiple pregnancies tended to be risky, and that delivering triplets under such abnormal circumstances was even riskier.

'Extremely lucky'
Separate or partially joined wombs, are uncommon, although not rare. About one woman in 1,000 has them, according to Khalaf. Pregnancies in such cases are possible, although they tend to result in premature birth more than half the time. One pregnancy in each womb is almost unheard of — Khalaf said he had identified only 70 cases over the past 50 years worldwide — and triplets delivered from two wombs has never before been recorded.

“This lady was extremely lucky,” said Khalaf.

Kersey was not immediately available for comment on Friday but the Southwest News Agency based in Filton, England, said it had bought the rights to her story. It would not disclose the amount.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Double joy! Twins have babies on same day
Indiana woman goes into labor while visiting sister having c-section
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:55 p.m. ET Jan 26, 2007

AUBURN, Ind. — Nicole Cramer had little idea when she went to the hospital to see her twin sister's newborn son that within hours, she would give birth to a son of her own. Her sister, Naomi Sale, had scheduled a Caesarean section on Tuesday morning and gave birth to Ethan Alexander at 8:29 a.m. Cramer, also nine months pregnant, visited Sale and her new nephew in the hospital but was having contractions and didn't stay long.

"I thought, after I did the C-section, on my way home, 'I wonder if her sister would go into labor?'" said Dr. Thaddeus Weghorst, the obstetrician for both women. Within hours, Cramer was in the delivery room of DeKalb Memorial Hospital. After 90 minutes of labor, Cramer delivered Carter Nathaniel Birchfield.

"This solidifies the theory on the bond between twins," Weghorst said. "Even their uteri have a bond."

Close Deliveries
Cramer and Sale turn 23 on Monday. They were due to give birth within a day of each other at the end of the month, but Weghorst's office didn't figure out they were twins until they were eight months along. The sisters explained, in unison, that they usually had their appointments on the same day, but at different times.

Weghorst, who has been in practice for eight years, said the close deliveries were a first for him. "I've delivered two sets of twins in the same day, but never this," he said.

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Transformers update

In August last year, I blogged about a new live-action movie coming out this summer based on the Transformers cartoon, with a teaser trailer. Here is their new trailer:



It releases on 7/4/07...let's hope it's a good rendition of the beloved cartoon.

Star Trek XI Update

I briefly discussed the upcoming new Star Trek movie when noting Star Trek's 40th anniversary in September 2006. Sci-Fi Wire has reported some updates, directly from Shatner, that seem to confirm the rumors:

Shatner Leaks Trek XI Details

William Shatner revealed to SCI FI Wire that the upcoming 11th Star Trek movie will indeed, as rumored, deal with the early years of Capt. James T. Kirk and Spock—and that he will definitely appear in the movie if director J.J. Abrams can find a place to use him. Shatner, who originated the role of Kirk in the original Trek series and several subsequent films, said in an interview that he was invited to meet with Abrams (Mission: Impossible III), who is also co-writing the movie.

"I met with J.J., and they told me they would like me to be part of their film, but they have to write the role," Shatner said in an interview.

As for the many rumors concerning the sequel's story, Shatner said that Abrams will explore Kirk and Spock during their Starfleet Academy years. "Yes, we know the story is based on young Kirk," Shatner said. Up until now, everyone connected with the film has maintained strict silence about the storyline, though rumors have run rampant that they concern Kirk and Spock's first missions.

As for Shatner's place in that storyline? "They need to figure out how to put the dead captain in with the young captain," he said. "It's a very complex, technical problem of how to write the character in, and I'm not sure how they will solve it." It sounds as if Shatner may play an older version of Kirk.

Coincidentally, the Starfleet storyline is one Shatner is already working on for his latest Trek-based novels. "I'm writing with Gar and Judy Reeves-Stevens two books on the academy, with the young Kirk and the young Spock," Shatner revealed. "We've submitted the first book to the publishers, and I think it will be out in the beginning of 2008. It's got a working title of The Academy, but I don't think that will stick."

Meanwhile, Abrams told Entertainment Weekly that a draft of the Trek XI script is done and will be trimmed sometime soon. The sequel will be targeted, "on the one hand, for people who love Star Trek, the fix that they will get will be really satisfying," Abrams told the magazine. "For people who've never seen it or know it vaguely, I think they will enjoy it equally, because the movie does not require you to know anything about Star Trek. I would actually prefer [that] people don't know the series, because I feel like they will come to it with an open mind." —Tara DiLullo Bennett

Medieval Times!

We went to see Medieval Times at the Baltimore/Washington, DC castle today and had a grand time watching knights fight on horse and by hand, as well as some Andalusian horse tricks, all while we ate quite a feast with only our hands. I took some video clips, mostly including the Black and White Knight, in whose section we sat and cheered on in the competition (watch below).

Happy New Year!

Well, it's that time again for New Year's Resolutions. And again, this year, a goal of mine is to lose some weight. Perhaps if I could get into these guys' treadmill routine, I might make some headway in the right direction!



Happy New Year to everyone....Have a blessed 2007!