In the rarest of the rare cases, seven premature babies were born on Nov. 19, 1997, at a hospital in Des Moines, Iowa, setting the record as the world’s first septuplets surviving birth. They weighed between 2 and 4 pounds (approx. 1 and 2 kg), and they owe their mutual existence to their parents’ decision of not opting for selective reduction.
The couple, Bobbi and Kenny McCaughey, first had a daughter named Mikayla. But later, since Bobbi was born with a malfunctioning pituitary gland that could not produce enough hormones to stimulate ovulation, she was injected with a fertility drug, Metrodin.
