WASHINGTON - Their tiny hands barely large enough to wrap around a finger, five boys and two girls were sleeping in incubators yesterday at Georgetown University Hospital after becoming the second set of septuplets ever to survive birth in the United States.
Born 12 weeks premature to a woman who had taken fertility drugs, the infants spent yesterday in intensive care after their delivery by Caesarean section over a span of three minutes Thursday night.
The parents asked to keep the family's identity confidential, so the only names provided were the hospital's shorthand for the infants: Babies A, B, C, D, E, F and G.
The medical staff said the babies - each weighing less than 2 1/2 pounds - would likely remain in critical condition for days and be hospitalized for at least seven weeks.
Nevertheless, doctors spoke optimistically about the seven infants, who occasionally blinked their eyes from under their pink and blue baby hats yesterday.
"There were none of the problems for which we prepared," Dr. Craig Winkel, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Georgetown, said at a news conference. Still, he added, "I'm not sure we can say we're totally out of the woods yet."
The babies are likely to capture the public's curiosity as the world's third set of septuplets to survive delivery. One previous set were born in 1998 in Saudi Arabia. The first ever to survive were born in Iowa in 1997, to Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey.
The McCaughey toddlers, two of whom suffer continuing medical problems, remain in the spotlight, treated to trips to Walt Disney World and featured in magazines around the world.
All the Washington septuplets were able to breathe on their own yesterday, though six were aided by ventilators and one needed medication for a blood pressure problem. The babies are 13 to 14 inches long.
Mutahar Fauzia, the Arlington, Va., physician who referred the mother to Georgetown, said her patient is a Muslim who chose not to abort any of the fetuses because of her religion.
Selective abortion is sometimes used in multiple pregnancies to increase the chance for the other fetuses to survive. As a Catholic hospital, Georgetown does not perform such abortions.
"I must tell you, the main thing that kept her comfortable was the feeling that God was going to help," Fauzia said of her patient.
Fauzia said she prayed when she first saw seven "tiny dots" at seven weeks on a sonogram: "From that time until I got to Georgetown, you cannot imagine, I could not even sleep at night. I had to say constantly, `God, please help me.'"
Once she was surrounded by the experts at the hospital, whom she called her patient's "angels," she could relax a bit.
After the delivery, the mother was shown photographs of the babies, which one nurse said she clutched to her heart.
"She was crying and holding the pictures," said Dana Adamson, a nurse manager in the neonatal intensive care unit. "She looked at each one individually very closely."
Later in the day, the hospital said, the mother was able to see her babies.
The hospital said that offers for baby-related products had begun to roll in yesterday - Clarion, the hotel chain, called with an offer of beds - and staffers provided a phone number for outside donations.
Doctors said that as soon as possible, the mother would be encouraged to start feeding breast milk to the newborns, who are now being fed nutrients through IV tubes. The mother, who was in good condition, is likely to be released from the hospital within a week.
The mother had been admitted to the hospital in mid-June to continue the bed rest she had begun about four months into pregnancy, doctors said.
Hospital staff members, who would not say where the couple was from or whether they had health insurance, estimated the cost of caring for the mother's month in the hospital before her delivery, and the projected hospital stay for the babies, at about $1 million.
Dr. Helain Landy, the physician who oversaw the delivery, said the mother's natural labor began at 8 p.m. Thursday, triggering a choreographed maneuver of at least 25 medical staffers who had been rehearsing for the event. With the father watching, and the mother awake but numbed by an epidural anesthetic, the seven babies were born between 11:25 and 11:28 p.m.
Each baby had his or her own "swat team" of specialists who took the infant into an adjoining neonatal intensive care ward, checking for such signs as oxygen content in blood from the placenta and developmental deformities.
"It really was almost like launching a rocket ship, in terms of the teamwork," said Dr. Richard Goldberg, the hospital's vice president for medical affairs.
Of the seven babies, the two girls, who registered the lowest weights of all the infants, appeared to be the strongest and the weakest: One was given dopamine to support her blood pressure; the tiniest of the bunch was the only one not to need a ventilator.
