After worry, joy arrives for mother of quintuplets

Associated Press

PHOENIX

The new mother of quintuplets kept her excitement in check for the first six months of her pregnancy – even putting off setting up a nursery.

But Margaret Baudinet could finally take a sigh of relief after a team of Phoenix doctors delivered five early Christmas presents, all wrapped in hospital blankets.

Baudinet and her husband, Michael, welcomed four girls and one boy on Dec. 4 at Dignity Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center.

The Virginia couple temporarily moved to Arizona to be closer to Dr. John Elliott, a specialist in multiple-birth pregnancies.

She said it wasn’t until she was discharged from the hospital that her fear of things going wrong had lifted.

“I have a very odd relationship with hope,” she said Wednesday at the hospital.

Friends and family in Virginia have prepared the nursery for Baudinet, who plans to return next month with her five healthy babies.

The children, all of whom weighed a little more than 3 pounds at birth, were delivered within 17 minutes with the help of a team of 24 medical professionals that included two anesthesiologist, three surgeons and 15 employees from an intensive care unit.

The children, who remain in the intensive care unit, can now breathe on their own and are being bottle-fed.