One of the triplets gets quality care at Bhagirathi Neotia Woman & Child Care Centre. Picture by Pabitra Das

Farhat Naz can’t thank her stars and her doctors at a city hospital enough. Not only did she give birth to a set of triplets on Thursday evening, but all three of the 10-week premature newborns are doing fine, after initial signs of depressed respiration.

“The incidence of triplets itself is extremely rare, on an average, just one in every 64,000 pregnancies. To save all three is close to a medical miracle,” says Rahul Sen, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at the Bhagirathi Neotia Woman & Child Care Centre (BNWCC) on Rawdon Street, where the two baby girls and their triplet brother are recuperating in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Sen performed the emergency Ceasarean section on Farhat at BNWCC when she complained of “sudden reduced movement”, indicative of respiratory distress syndrome. “This was always going to be a high-risk pregnancy, but in her case, the risk factor got amplified since she was given a fertility drug within three months of marriage and also has a family history of twins,” said Sen.

Neonatal intensive-care specialist Sushmita Chowdhury, supervising treatment of the triplets at BNWCC, agrees with Sen that respiratory distress syndrome, or ‘premature lung’, was the main first-stage challenge to save the newborns. All three were put on continuous positive airway pressure ventilation to force air into their lungs.

The smallest of the triad — the first-born — weighed just 1.17 kg on birth, due to “intra-uterine growth retardation” since all three shared the same nutrients and the same space in the mother’s womb.

“The vital signs have got stable and the outlook now seems bright,” Chowdhury told Metro on Sunday. The first and third-born were both out of ventilator support, “breathing nicely” and “active and alert”. They were being fed through nasogastric tube and tolerating the tube feed. The second-born should also be out of the ventilator by Monday and started on nasograstric feed, feel the doctors.

With the indigent parents from Bihar not in a position to afford the “extremely high cost” of NICU care for the premature triplets — touching Rs 1 lakh to save each baby— the hospital has waived treatment cost for the newborns. Even medicines and consumables for the mother are being provided “at a nominal rate”.