Multiple Births

When Karen Adams of West Covina saw the snapshot of the two black-haired babies with pink bows, she said she felt a flower blossom in her heart. They were her granddaughters, but she had never seen them because they had been given away to adoptive parents half a continent away. No matter how well the couple cares for them, Adams, a descendant of Native Americans from a Northern California Pomo tribe, said the twins, now 2, don't belong with outsiders.

About 865,000 more twins have been born in the United States over the last 30 years due to infertility treatments that boosted multiple births. Statistics released Wednesday by the federal government show that twin births rose 76% from 1980 to 2009. One in every 30 births in 2009 was a twin compared with one in every 53 babies in 1980. Twin births rose the most among women age 40 and older, who are most likely to undergo in vitro fertilization and other infertility procedures that increase the odds of becoming pregnant with twins.

Two weeks ago, Brianna Morrison gave birth to six babies in Minneapolis. Less than a day later, Jenny Masche delivered six babies in a Phoenix hospital. Both of the women had been treated for infertility and had used fertility-enhancing drugs. The two families expressed joy, but many fertility doctors were dismayed. For years, doctors have been pushing to lower the rate of multiple births due to fertility treatment. Not only had two headline-grabbing births occurred in the same week, but several recent scientific papers also revealed mixed results in the eight-year effort to reduce the U.S. multiple-birth rate.

The Beverly Hills fertility doctor who assisted Nadya Suleman in conceiving octuplets and six previous children said during testimony Wednesday that his goal with each pregnancy was to produce a single baby and that Suleman agreed to reduce the number of fetuses if the treatment were to result in multiple births. "We don't really intentionally want to make it a multiple pregnancy ? our goal is a single term pregnancy," said Dr. Michael Kamrava. "However, this is not an exact science.

Re "Iowa Seven, Houston Eight: a Difference," Column Left, Dec. 29: Unlike Robert Scheer, I do think there is a reasonable way to regulate multiple births: through taxation. We subsidize childbearing under the current tax code that creates perverse incentives. A prudent policy would neither subsidize nor penalize families with two children. But when zero-population-growth levels are exceeded, the tax man should come knocking and the financial penalty should rise steeply with each additional birth.

New statistics give legs to a phenomenon seen in American homes and schools everywhere nowadays--twins, triplets and other multiple-birth children are being born at a rapid and unprecedented pace. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, twin births rose 52% (from 68,339 to 104,137) from 1980 to 1997, the most recent year studied. Triplet-or-higher multiple births climbed 404% (from 1,337 to 6,737). Single births rose 6% during the same period.

A team of 46 doctors, nurses and surgical assistants at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center meticulously planned the births for weeks. As the date approached, they held two practice runs. They didn't want any surprises. But they got one anyway Monday morning when it came time for the delivery. "We had plans for seven babies. Then we found baby H," Dr. Karen Maples said. "My eyes got to be the size of saucers." It took only five minutes -- from 10:43 a.m. to 10:48 a.m.

Twice a year, the irrepressible Kienast family quintuplets were delivered to millions of American households in the pages of Good Housekeeping. The New Jersey quints took to the airwaves to show other youngsters how to run faster with Keds. Kodak posed the photogenic five on prime-time TV to show how good those multiple grins looked in Kodachrome. But then the free diaper service ran out. The TV contracts weren't renewed.

Benjamin and Patrick Binder, the Siamese twins who were born joined at the head and then separated in an unprecedented surgical marathon seven months ago, will be released from the hospital this week to begin what doctors hope will eventually be normal lives, officials said Tuesday. The 14-month-old boys, who will return to their native West Germany with their parents, still face challenges to develop their speech and motor skills, vision and mental capacities.

Even as it strains the imagination, the extraordinary birth of eight babies to a 27-year-old woman in Houston not only poses a heavy challenge to the infants' doctors but also feeds into a larger social quandary about the extreme costs of high multiple births brought on by fertility drugs. Doctors on Sunday expressed wonder at what appeared to be the largest multiple birth in the United States, but they also emphasized that the tiny infants face an uncertain future.

The Medical Board of California has accused a Beverly Hills fertility doctor of a pattern of gross negligence that led to the birth of Nadya Suleman's 14 children, including the world's longest-surviving octuplets, and created a "stockpile" of unused frozen embryos which serve "no clinical purpose." The 13-page accusation filed in December against Dr. Michael Kamrava paints a picture of 11 years of medical care in which Suleman returned to Kamrava's office again and again to undergo fertility treatments.

The Octomom is finally ready for prime time. Nadya Suleman, the single mother of 14 children, will be featured in a Fox special "Octomom: The Incredible Unseen Footage" that producers say will offer a "jaw-dropping" look into her chaotic life. The special, which will air Aug. 19, was compiled from footage shot by RadarOnline.com, which has had full access to Suleman since last March, when she brought the first two of her octuplets home to her La Habra residence. "The access they got is amazing," said Mike Darnell, Fox's head of alternative programming.

Octuplets' mother Nadya Suleman has fired a nonprofit group of nurses that helped care for her children, accusing them of spying on her and reporting her to child welfare officials, her spokesman said Monday. Suleman attorney Jeff Czech said the relationship started badly between Suleman and Angels in Waiting, which has been training nannies paid by Suleman at the family's La Habra home. Last month an attorney for Angels in Waiting filed a complaint against Suleman with child welfare officials, seeking an investigation into whether the mother could provide a suitable environment for her 14 children.

Nadya Suleman told TV host "Dr. Phil" McGraw on Tuesday that she fears Kaiser Permanente Medical Center may not release her octuplets to her until she proves she can care for them. In an interview with The Times, McGraw said Suleman called him Tuesday afternoon, distressed after talking to Kaiser officials. Suleman has taped two episodes of McGraw's show, the first of which is scheduled to run today.

Two Brentwood publicists said they dropped octuplets mom Nadya Suleman as a client Saturday because they have received a slew of death threats. Suleman, a 33-year-old Whittier resident, was unmarried, unemployed and already had six children using a sperm donor when she gave birth to eight children from the same donor Jan. 26 at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Bellflower.

When the identity of Nadya Suleman's fertility doctor was made public this week, the Internet lit up with angry commentary. Many called for Dr. Michael Kamrava to be stripped of his medical license -- or worse -- for providing the fertility treatments that led to Suleman's 14 children, including last month's octuplets. Rosalind Saxton had a different reaction.

Here's the rundown on guests and topics for the weekend's public-affairs programs: Today "John McLaughlin's One on One": Iraq, 1:30 p.m. (28). "Evans & Novak": Nizar Hamdoon, Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, 2:30 p.m., repeats Sunday 7 a.m. CNN. "Inside Politics Weekend": Former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, 3:30 p.m.; repeats midnight, CNN. "Capital Gang": Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), 4 p.m., 10:30 p.m. CNN. "Larry King Weekend": Howard Schultz, chairman of Starbucks Coffee Inc.

A room at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange was packed with kids and moms Wednesday morning--but not in equal proportions. For every mother present, there were at least three children. The occasion: the hospital's 16th annual multiple-birth reunion. "It's just a lot of fun," said Valerie Orleans, the hospital's director of marketing and organizer of the event. The custom started in 1982, when five sets of triplets were born at the hospital. "That was such an incredible thing for us," Orleans said.

A few months after Dr. Michael Kamrava helped Nadya Suleman become pregnant with octuplets, he transferred at least seven embryos to another patient. She was in her late 40s and wanted just one baby. Now she's five months pregnant with quadruplets and hospitalized at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, according to several sources familiar with the situation. The new case could add to concerns about Kamrava's practice and about whether the fertility industry needs more regulation.