An Italian woman has given birth to quintuplets, but the mother and the babies are in a serious condition, doctors at a hospital in the Sicilian city of Messina said today.
The quintuplets' birth, which took place on Wednesday, was kept secret until now at the request of the parents, they said.
The babies, four girls and a boy, were born two months prematurely. The smallest weighed 550 grams while the biggest weighed 1.2 kilograms. All five are in incubators.
"The quintuplets are 28 weeks and two days old and if a premature birth is a difficult situation when there is one child, imagine when there are five of them," Doctor Eloisa Gitto told reporters.
"For the time being they are in a precarious but stable state. It's too early to be reassured though."
The mother is in an intensive care unit. Doctors said they could not disclose details of her condition for privacy reasons.
The 34-year-old was originally due to give birth in Cosenza, on the Italian mainland, but complications arose and she was flown by helicopter to Messina.
Data from national statistics agency ISTAT shows multiple births have been on the rise in Italy in past years, largely due to fertility treatment, although it is not known if such treatment was used in this case.
A Sicilian couple had octuplets in 2001, but four of the babies died within days of their birth.