Costa Rica News – Today in news that is very sad, the fifth baby in Costa Rica’s first set of sextuplets has died, La Nación reports.
FOTOS Gabriela Tellez
In May, 34-year-old Silvia Villegas gave birth to four baby boys and two girls at 27 weeks, with each one weighing between 2 and 2.033 pounds, according to Fox News Latino. Villegas had previously given birth to a child who died. After that, Villegas and her husband turned to artificial insemination for their second pregnancy (in vitro fertilization is illegal in Costa Rica), and she became pregnant with sextuplets.
La Nación reports that because no single hospital in the country had the resources to handle so many premature babies at once, they were split up after birth and taken to different hospitals in San Jose to be cared for.
Five of the babies have since died, with Gabriel González Villegas, the youngest, and fifth, to die when he caught a cold after undergoing a surgery on Saturday night. (Gabriel is not pictured.)
The Tico Times reports that the birth of the sextuplets actually spurred the Costa Rican Doctors and Surgeons Associates to approve new guidelines from the Human Fertility Commission that limit the number of ovarian follicles that can be fertilized during artificial insemination in an attempt to reduce the probability of multiple births, arguing that they endanger the lives of not only the woman but also her babies.
The only surviving baby, Valentina, remains at home in good health.
By Alanna Nunez, Cosmopoliton
