For new parents Jacqueline and Linden Thompson, the last week has been a bit of a blur. But they know this much: They are happy, they are tired, and they are several bedrooms short.
On Thursday, Jacqueline Thompson, 32, gave birth to sextuplets at Georgetown University Hospital. One of them, a girl, was stillborn, but the rest -- Emily Elizabeth, Richard Linden, Octavia Daniela, Stella Kimberly and AnnMarie Amanda -- are all doing fine. Yesterday, the new family made its first public appearance.
"At first, I thought they were kidding," Linden Thompson recalled yesterday about the day he heard his wife was expecting six children -- their first. "I thought it was a joke! But this is a real celebration."
Sextuplets are extremely rare; there are only three living sets in the United States, said Janet Bleyl, founder and president of the Triplet Connection, a California-based support and information organization. But "higher multiple" births -- triplets, quads and quints and beyond -- almost tripled from 1984 to 1994, according to information provided by the National Center for Health Statistics. Higher multiple births are especially uncommon among black couples, such as the Thompsons. (She is from Trinidad, he is from Guyana.) Only 327 black couples, compared with 3,748 for whites, in the United States had higher multiple births in 1993, the latest year for which the center could provide such statistics. The Thompsons are the first black couple in the United States to have sextuplets. The stillborn baby was alive until a few days before the Caesarean section delivery. The five others weighed two to three pounds each at birth. Several needed respiratory assistance, and all remain in incubators because they can't yet maintain body temperature, neonatologist Nitin Mehta said.
Yesterday, little Richard wore a light blue cap and blinked curiously as reporters and photographers fawned over him and his mother. The Thompsons would not discuss whether their children were conceived with the use of fertility drugs. Joseph Collea, the maternal fetal medicine specialist who delivered the babies, said Jacqueline Thompson has "wanted a viable pregnancy for a long time." Of the three living U.S. sets of sextuplets -- including a set born in New York in March -- all were conceived with fertility treatments, Bleyl said. A woman carrying sextuplets can look -- and feel -- nine months pregnant by early in her second trimester, Collea said, and Jacqueline Thompson had been home in bed since December. She entered the hospital at the end of February. When it came time for the birth, the delivery room was "controlled pandemonium," Collea said, with family members, obstetricians and three staff members for each baby. At 29 weeks, six days, hospital officials said, the Thompson children's gestation was the longest for sextuplets born in the United States. But they are tiny, with heads only as big as lemons and hands about as long as paper clips, so the surviving babies will stay in the hospital an additional eight to 10 weeks. That should give Linden, an electrician, and Jacqueline, a former cashier and waitress, time to look for a house to rent. Their current one, in Northeast Washington, has two bedrooms; they'd like at least four, Linden Thompson said. But as for more children? "Not right now," Jacqueline Thompson said with a smile. "Not right now."
CAPTION: Little Richard Linden Thompson, with parents Jacqueline and Linden, is one of a set of sextuplets, five of whom survived.
CAPTION: Wearing a breathing tube and a cap to sustain warmth, Richard Linden Thompson meets the world. He shares a birthday with four siblings.