SALT LAKE CITY, May 29 (UPI) -- A Salt Lake City couple, Fernando and Guillermina Garcia, welcomed quintuplets this week and expressed their joy at a hospital news conference.
"We just wanted them to be healthy " the 34-year-old mother said, speaking through an interpreter at University of Utah Hospital Tuesday. "We had faith that, God willing, everything would turn out fine."
The three girls and two boys were delivered by Caesarean section Sunday morning, and required 100 medical staff to monitor the babies and their mother, said Tracey Manuck, the hospital's maternal fetal medicine specialist who oversees high-risk pregnancies.
Guillermina Garcia carried the babies to 31.5 weeks gestation. The typical gestation of quintuplets is 27 to 29 weeks, Manuck noted.
The conception, and whether chance or modern science was involved, was being kept a family secret, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Wednesday.
Gullermina Garcia is expected to leave the hospital in several days but Esmeralda, Fatima, Fernando, Marissa and Jordan, named in the order of their birth, will stay in the hospital's Newborn Intensive Care Unit for at least six more weeks.
