The first infant, a girl, was born at 7:43 a.m., followed by two brothers and two sisters within the coming two minutes. The mother and all the quints, who weigh from 1,490 to 1,820 grams each, are all in good condition, said sources at Beijing Maternity Hospital, where the delivery took place.

A team of 20 medical workers were at work since early Monday to prepare for the operation, prevent postpartum hemorrhage and take care of the quints, who have been carefully coded in line with the sequence of their birth.

When the quints were detected in a routine checkup, their parents, fearing they would not be able to afford so many, sought to abort some of them. However, an abortion had become impossible by then because the mother, Wang Cuiying, had been pregnant for over three months.

Just as the couple were troubled by their financial situation, Yili Industrial Group, a manufacturer of dairy products based in Inner Mongolia, offered to pay for all their medical expenses for the delivery, free milk power for all the quintuplets until they are seven years old and an additional 20,000 yuan (US$2,400) to help with their schooling.

The couple are both from Hebei Province, which neighbors Beijing. Neither of their own families had any precedent of multiple delivery, according to the father, Jiao Baocun.

Beijing Maternity Hospital witnessed the birth of a previous set of quintuplets 40 years ago, but some died due to poor medical conditions at that time.

(People?s Daily March 5, 2002)