Wichita — A Kansas woman carrying sextuplets said the hardest part of her pregnancy is being separated from her family and "eating a lot."
Sondra Headrick, a 33-year-old Kingman County resident, has been confined to bed rest since Jan. 3 at Via Christi Regional Medical Center-St. Joseph Campus, where doctors hope to extend her pregnancy for as long as possible, The Wichita Eagle reported Tuesday.
Eldon Headrick, left, and his wife, Sondra Headrick, right, appear with their daughter, Aubrianna, 3, at a news conference in Wichita, where it was announced that Sondra Headrick is 21 weeks pregnant with sextuplets. The news conference was Tuesday at Via Christi Regional Medical Center-St. Joseph Campus.
"I definitely have fears about the babies that they will not all survive," Headrick said Tuesday. "I'm prepared for that, but I really want to be positive."
Sondra and Eldon Headrick are expecting three boys and three girls whose survival would mean the first set of sextuplets in Kansas history. National health statistics do not track multiple births beyond triplets.
Fewer than 100 sets of sextuplets are on record, and only about a dozen have survived as full sets. Some of the children lived with vision problems, cerebral palsy or other health defects.
Headrick's sextuplets resulted from fertility drugs used last summer. The couple already have a child from a fertility procedure, 3-year-old Aubrianna, who has been busy practicing changing diapers on her doll.
"I'm doing fairly well," Sondra Headrick said. "The hardest part for me at this time is being separated from my family and eating a lot."
David Grainger, the Wichita reproductive endocrinologist who supervised the fertility procedure in September, said he tried to prevent a multiple pregnancy and was devastated when it happened anyway.
"I dread this," he said. "The media elsewhere in covering multiple births has usually focused on the oh-gee-whiz-isn't-this-a-miracle aspect of multiple births.
"But the fact is, multiple pregnancy is very dangerous to the mother and the babies."
The fetuses for now called babies "A," "B," "C," "D," "E" and "F" for now are kicking at each other and at their mother's ribs. Doctors say they are thriving in their 21st week of development.
Most pregnancies last 40 weeks, but multiple births rarely make it that long. The average delivery time for sextuplets is 23 weeks, said Van Bohman, a high-risk pregnancy specialist.
"Twenty-three weeks is almost always fatal to the babies not enough time," Bohman said.
Doctors are hoping to extend Headrick's pregnancy. "If we're lucky, to 32," Bohman said, meaning a mid- to late-March birthdate.
Grainger and Bohman told the couple they could abort the pregnancy or reduce it by four, giving the two remaining fetuses a better chance of survival.
Sondra Headrick said abortion was not a choice. She and her husband had already seen six heartbeats flickering on the doctor's sonogram monitor.
"You try as a mother not to get attached to the babies at that stage," she told the newspaper. "But it's impossible.
"Eldon and I don't want to portray ourselves as being any better than anyone else, or any more religious than anyone else who might find themselves in a similar situation and make a different decision."
Eldon Headrick earns $27,000 by cleaning storm drains for the city. In November, Sondra took leave from her job as a Medicare billing clerk at Kingman Community Hospital.
Eldon said he doesn't know how he will support his expanding family: "I'm working on it."
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