Good things came in fives for the Hansons
THEY were the most talkedabout sisters in Britain, and the Hanson girls really were a bit special.
Britain’s first live quintuplets of the 20th Century, they were also believed to be only the second all-female fivesome to come safely into the world.
Doctors had known from very early on that their mother, 33-year-old Irene, from Essex, was going to have multiple births, thanks to the new ultrasonic detector, which had been developed in Glasgow.
Only the second all-female fivesome in the world
Joanne Lesley was 2lb 7oz, Nicola Jane 2lb 13oz, Julie Anne 2lb 15oz, Sarah Louise 3lb 7oz and Jacqueline Mary was 2lb 6.5oz.
Delivered by 26 doctors and nurses, Nicola Jane had had some breathing problems, but otherwise all were well, and were fed with breast milk through tubes into their stomachs.
Their mother had been given a fertility drug, gonadotrophin, to help her fall pregnant.
When Canadian quintuplets the Dionne sisters were born in Ontario in 1934, they were seen as so unusual that they were put on public display in the hospital’s special viewing area they called Quintland.
The number of people coming to see them saw the five tiny girls rival Niagara Falls for popularity.
The Hansons, however, were cared for early on in separate
cubicles, and their 35-year-old father, John, said he was confident his wife would be easily able to take the lead in looking after five demanding babies.
With around 10,000 multiple births in the UK every year, however, soaring with the use of fertility drugs, the authorities wished to reduce it.
That was why the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority took action, in 2001, in
an attempt to bring the numbers down.
They restricted the number of embryos used in IVF treatment, although there would be no reduction in the use of drugs to induce ovulation.
Although 36 sets of quintuplets were born in just four years in the US, there were no British-born quintuplets between 1993 and 2001.
When a Russian couple came to Britain to have their quintuplets in 2007, they got a warning from County Tyrone’s Noel and Rhonda Loughran, the last to have had a fivesome in the UK.
They simply said: “You won’t know what’s hit you!”
Russian doctors had told the mother she should consider selectively aborting some of the foetuses to give the others a better chance of survival, but they came to the UK to have a safe delivery and, happily, did so.