By Amy Argetsinger
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 4:33 PM

LOS ANGELES, April 26 -- A woman believed to be the first surrogate mother to carry quintuplets gave birth to the babies early Tuesday at a Phoenix hospital, officials there said.

All five boys -- the biological children of a Gilbert, Ariz., couple that had tried for a decade to start a family -- were said to be in good health following the Caesarian delivery.

Each weighed between 3 pounds 7 ounces and 3 pounds 15 ounces. Surrogate Teresa Anderson gained more than 80 pounds during the 33-week pregnancy.

"She has given me my dream; she has given us our family," biological mother Luisa Gonzalez said in a statement released by Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center this morning. She and her husband, Enrique Moreno, had chosen the children's names weeks ago: Enrique, Jorge, Gabriel, Javier and Victor.

Javier, the smallest baby, has a congenital heart defect that doctors originally anticipated would require surgery within minutes of his birth. However, hospital spokeswoman Hollie Costello said this morning the boy is doing much better than expected and that physicians have decided to wait a few days before operating. All five will remain in a neonatal intensive care unit for several days.

In an interview published in The Washington Post two weeks ago, Anderson, a 25-year-old mother and nursing student from Mesa, Ariz., said she originally decided to become a surrogate in hopes of earning $15,000 for her own family. She met Gonzalez, 32, and Moreno, 34, through an ad on a surrogacy Web site and in September was implanted with embryos created in a laboratory from the couple's eggs and sperm.

However, after learning she was carrying quintuplets, Anderson said she decided not to accept money from the couple -- a landscaper and a homemaker -- because she realized they would need it to raise their unexpectedly outsized family.

Anderson was a veteran of four successful pregnancies -- two daughters with her husband Jerad, and two children that she gave for adoption as a teenager -- which her doctor, Phoenix perinatologist John Elliott, said was a factor in a pregnancy that went unusually smoothly for one involving quintuplets.

However, both Anderson and Gonzalez said they don't remember being warned that their fertility treatments could trigger multiple births, which carry serious health risks.

Last year, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine issued new guidelines recommending that for patients under the age of 35, no more than two embryos should be implanted, and possibly no more than one. Gonzalez's fertility specialist implanted five embryos in Anderson's womb.

However, the loose guidelines also urge doctors to decide each case following their own research and their patient's histories. Other experts said doctors are often compelled to implant extra embryos to improve the chance of success and avoid the possibility a patient will have to undergo the costly in vitro process again.

Anderson and her doctors had originally hoped to deliver the babies next week, extending the pregnancy to 34 weeks. However, she was admitted to the hospital last week after feeling early contractions and had recently developed pre-eclampsia, a potentially dire spike in blood pressure afflicting some pregnant women that abates after delivery.

According to hospital officials, Anderson said just minutes after the delivery that she felt great. "I thought it was amazing," she said. "It was just a wonderful blessing to see those babies and hear their cries."