4 daughters, 1 son arrive all at once

The first two ultrasounds gave no hint of anything unusual about Angela Tille's pregnancy. ¶ She and her husband, Heath, were simply excited to be having another baby, after a long struggle with infertility. ¶ But when Angela was nine weeks along, her doctor ran another test. "There are at least four here," he told her in January. ¶ From that moment on, life would never be the same.

On Friday, Angela Tille gave birth to quintuplets -- one boy and four girls -- at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. The babies, who were 11 weeks premature, were whisked to the newborn intensive care unit at adjacent Children's Hospital, where they were listed in critical but stable condition. "I'm delighted with how they're doing," said Dr. Bruce Ferrara, who specializes in high-risk newborns. "These are very healthy babies," he added. "I expect they'll be out of critical condition within 24 hours."

The babies -- named Brooklyn Elizabeth, Emma Nicole, Lauren Olivia, Madeline Paige and Alex Michael -- are the fifth set of quintuplets born at Abbott since 2001.

The Tilles, who live in River Falls, Wis., have had five months to adjust to the news. But as Heath, a medical equipment salesman, put it: "There's no way on God's green earth that you can prepare for this."

Heath and Angela, both 31, describe themselves as "a couple of normal Midwestern kids" who had tried for years, without success, to have a child. They had started the adoption process when Angela unexpectedly became pregnant with daughter Meredith, now 19-months-old. They decided to try again with a single fertility injection, knowing that there was perhaps a 20 percent chance of having twins. "We thought, well, we could handle twins," Angela said.

When she learned of the ultrasound test in January, she recalls, she burst into tears. "I can't say it was happiness at first," she said Thursday, on the eve of giving birth. "You're concerned. You're thinking, 'Oh my gosh, how are we going to do this?'"

Heath was on a business trip to Duluth, driving, when he got the call from his wife. He pulled over to the side of the road, blinkers on, as she broke the news. A state trooper pulled up to ask if he was OK. "I'm really not sure," he replied.

They were, understandably, overwhelmed by the news. It didn't help, Angela said, that they found out right after Nadya Suleman, the so-called Octomom, gave birth to eight babies in California and quickly became tabloid fodder. "Perfect timing," Angela joked.

Heath cringes at the mention of Suleman's name. "This is a completely 100 percent opposite situation from that," he said. "There's no similarity whatsoever, other than we're having more than one baby and so did she."

For advice, Angela turned to another River Falls couple, Jim and Brenda Derks, who had quintuplets in 2003. Meeting them had a profound effect, Angela said. She and her husband were just learning about the risks of multiple babies, and "having discussions about things like selective reduction." She knew that some parents in this situation decide to abort some embryos to give the others a better chance of survival.

She remembers what Brenda Derks had to say about that. "I look at my kids here, and I question who wouldn't be here," she told Angela.

"That's really what stuck the most with me," Angela said. "That, and that they were all just absolutely wonderfully healthy."

Doctors say it is rare for any woman carrying five babies to reach even 30 weeks gestation, much less the 40 weeks of a full-term delivery.

"What we were hoping was to get her to as close to 30 weeks as we could," said Dr. William Wagner, a specialist in high-risk pregnancies at Abbott Northwestern. The mother's health is increasingly at risk if they wait too long.

This week, he said, they decided they couldn't wait any longer, and scheduled Angela's C-section.

At 9:40 a.m. Friday, at 29 weeks, 2 days, Angela was wheeled into the operating room while Heath waited in the hallway, dressed in blue surgical scrubs. Around the corner, daughter Meredith played with her grandparents and great-grandparents from Iowa in a family waiting room.

A nurse handed Heath five tiny hats, each tied with a different colored ribbon, and he began to wipe away tears. The colors matched the list of names, tucked in his pocket. Once the babies were born, he would hand out the hats, and that's how his children would get their names.

At 10:20, Heath was summoned to the delivery room. At 10:29, the first baby appeared. By 10:32, all five had arrived, ranging from 2 lb. 1/2 oz. to 2 lb. 11 1/2 oz.

Heath followed as a team from Children's Hospital wheeled Emma, in an isolette, through an underground tunnel to the newborn intensive care unit. Then he went back for more.

All five babies were on oxygen to help them breathe, and are expected to remain hospitalized for seven to eight weeks, which is routine in such cases, said Ferrara, the newborn specialist. "I expect they're going to grow up to be very healthy children," he said.