Home >  Health & Science

Wednesday, April 23, 2003

By Christopher Snowbeck, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The Perry sextuplets have shared close quarters before, so it was a familiar feeling when Ian and Zoe Perry began sharing an incubator this week at Magee-Womens Hospital.

	Doctors and nurses at Magee-Women's Hospital have brought two of the Perry sextuplets, Ian, foreground, and Zoe, together as part of a developmental strategy called "co-bedding." (John McCaulley)

When the two were reunited Monday, they exchanged long looks and then got back to the business of life for five-week old preemies: sleeping.

By yesterday, Ian felt comfortable enough with his sister to be a bit of a bed hog, crowding her toward one of the walls in their shared incubator, a Plexiglas house where it's a balmy 88 degrees.

Ian's expansive sleeping was revenge, perhaps, for an incident earlier in the day when he seemed momentarily bothered by Zoe. She might have had a finger in his armpit, speculated Cheryl Milford, a neonatal psychologist at Magee.

Doctors and nurses at Magee brought Ian and Zoe together as part of a developmental strategy called "co-bedding."

Some premature babies sleep better while cuddling with a sibling and deep sleep helps brain development. Some believe that co-bedding can also help babies eat better and stabilize their breathing and heart rates.

While scientific data to support the practice aren't definitive, there's no harm in trying it, said Milford, and some families like the idea of it.

Ian and Zoe seem to be getting along as bunkmates. Doctors will attempt to co-bed Simon, Olivia, Joshua and Madison as their conditions stabilize -- preferably two per incubator, since that's the plan for cribs once the babies get home.

The babies, of course, have the final say in all this.

"If they don't like being co-bedded, you can't put them together," Milford said.

"If it's a group that likes each other, they touch one another and it's like, 'There you are, where have you been?' " she said. "Given it's sextuplets, [you] don't know if they're going to be happy to be back together or if it's like 'Oh dear Lord, I'm back in this crowded situation again.' "

Now more than a month old, the Perry sextuplets are in good health and gaining weight.

Ian remains the largest at 3 pounds, 9 1/2 ounces, up from his birth weight of 2 pounds, 9 ounces. Madison, who was the smallest at birth at 1 pound, 9 ounces, remains the smallest at 2 pounds, 5 ounces.

All six were in fair condition yesterday at Magee and they have all been taken off ventilators. All are receiving tube feedings of formula and mother's milk. Ian and Zoe have begun receiving some of their nutrition through bottle feedings.

The first sextuplets ever born in Pittsburgh, the Perry babies entered the world during the 28th week of Erin Perry's pregnancy. That alone was good news since babies born before 28 weeks run a greater risk of having the most severe developmental delays, Milford said.

The developmental news got even better on the fourteenth day of the babies' lives, when head ultrasounds showed no significant bleeding in their brains. Bleeding in the brain can indicate cerebral palsy, a disorder of movement and posture that comes from a nervous system anomaly or brain damage.

The head ultrasound alone doesn't provide a guarantee for how the babies will turn out, said Dr. Joaquim Pinheiro, a neonatologist at Albany, N.Y., Medical Center, who also is a father of triplets. But it puts the babies in a much lower risk category, he said..

Magee doctors have begun giving the sextuplets vision exams and will soon give them hearing tests.

Hearing development reaches maturity for babies in the womb around the 32nd week of pregnancy, which would have been last week for the sextuplets, so hospital staff have tried to keep the noise down around them. It's around the 33rd or 34th week of pregnancy that babies learn to coordinate their sucking and swallowing reflexes with breathing, all of which is necessary for taking a bottle.

"We'll try them when we think they're medically stable to attempt it, but they may not all do that at the same time," said Milford. "Again, these are six individual babies."

Erin Perry attested to that fact yesterday as she stood over her co-bedded children. Ian is laid back, while Zoe is curious, often looking around when her parents are near. Both babies have thin brown hair, but Ian's is a bit lighter. The boy's complexion is somewhat darker than the girl's, perhaps reflecting his father's Italian heritage.

"I like to see them up close together," Erin Perry said. "I get to see them snuggle up together."

Reaching through two portholes on the side of the incubator, she dressed Ian in a shirt before taking him out of the incubator, wrapping him in a blanket and setting him on her lap. At that moment, a monitor showed Zoe's respiration rate drop dramatically -- a testament to how the babies regulate their breathing when they're co-bedded. Within a minute, Zoe's breathing rate went back to normal.

Milford said Magee has been co-bedding infants since 1999, and has found they often adjust their breathing and behavior to match each other.

"For years, they've been [co-bedding] in Scandinavia, and they think we're weird for studying it," she said.