Region | Egypt
Septuplets' Egyptian mother hopes to hold the babies soon
A day after giving birth to septuplets, a 27-year-old Egyptian woman said on Sunday she's only seen her babies on television and hopes to hold them and give them names soon.
- AP
- Published: 21:52 August 17, 2008
- Gazallah Khamis, her husband and other relatives are brainstorming names for the septuplets.
- Image Credit: AP
Cairo: A day after giving birth to septuplets, a 27-year-old Egyptian woman said on Sunday she's only seen her babies on television and hopes to hold them and give them names soon.
Gazallah Khamis is still hospitalised after giving birth a day earlier to four boys and three girls. She said she is "very anxious to see them" and to breast-feed at least some of them.
"I saw them on TV. They are very cute," she said from her hospital bed in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria.
"I am just waiting to hold them in my arms and breastfeed them," she said in a weak voice. "I don't know if I can do it to all, but I will try."
Her husband and other relatives are brainstorming names, said Gazallah, who took fertility drugs to conceive in an effort to produce a son. She is already the mother of three girls, ages 7 to 11.
The family lives in Behaira, a northern province on the fertile Nile delta where, like much of rural Egypt, sons are preferred to daughters.
Need a lot of care
The newborns, who weigh between 1.5 and 2 kilos, are being kept in incubators but appear to be healthy, said Dr Emad Darwish, who delivered the babies Saturday at Al Shatbi Hospital.
He said three remain at Al Shatbi while the other four have been sent to two other hospitals in Alexandria 'because we do not have enough incubators.' "They are doing well, but they still need a lot of care," Darwish said.
Gazallah was also in good condition, he said, after receiving a blood transfusion because of bleeding during a Caesarean section.
Darwish said he decided to perform a Caesarean at the end of the woman's eighth month of pregnancy due to pressure on her kidneys.
"What they need most is a dwelling to live in. I hope the government will give them an apartment," Gazallah said.
"With the help of Allah, they will make it, but I think it will be difficult," he said.
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