Dec 28, 2008 7:30 am US/Eastern
Quintuplets Born At Staten Island Hospital
NEW YORK (AP) ―
They're first-time parents -- five times over.
A set of quintuplets was born Saturday at Staten Island University Hospital, spokesman Christian Preston said. He said the four girls, one boy and their mother were doing well.
Preston declined to give the family's name, but Tony Scherillo told the Staten Island Advance the parents are his daughter and son-in-law, Jamie and Kevin Ferrante.
"Everybody was ecstatic" on learning that the new parents were expecting five babies, said Scherillo, 67. "Nobody could believe it."
The babies -- delivered within 6 minutes of each other by Caesarean section -- ranged in weight from 1 pound, 8 ounces, to about 2 pounds, 4 ounces, the newspaper said. It gave their names as Allesia Louise, Amanda Frances, Ella Lilliana, Emily Ann and Matthew Sabatino.
Scherillo said his daughter had not used fertility treatments, which have made multiple births more common in recent decades.
Still, quintuplets remain rare. The federal government's National Center for Health Statistics tallied 68 quintuplet and higher-order births in 2005, compared to more than 400 quadruplets, 133,000 twins and 4.1 million births overall.
Hospitals in Houston, Phoenix and Annapolis, Md., also reported quintuplet births this year.
Saturday's quintuplet birth was a first for the Staten Island hospital, Preston said.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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