Jump to main content

Oh baby! Mother delivers spontaneous quadruplets at Clements University Hospital

UTSW physicians share the details of a historic hospital birth.

On July 3, 2020, patient Katie Sturm gave birth to spontaneous, fraternal quadruplets at William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital. The boys were the first set of quadruplets ever born at the hospital. The rare delivery came just 18 weeks after Mrs. Sturm underwent a successful surgery at Clements University Hospital’s Zale Lipshy Pavilion to remove a glioma, a rare brain tumor.

In the video, the parents and doctors share the delivery day story and what it took for doctors to work across multidisciplinary medical teams to effectively treat the rare case.

Read more about the case.

 

Transcript

[Katie Sturm]

It's kind of ironic. I took four pregnancy tests and I had four babies.

[Dr. Santiago-Muñoz]

You don't see these often unless they're spontaneous. These are unique special deliveries. UT Southwestern is especially prepared for any kind of high risk patients, especially in maternal complications because this campus has specialists of absolutely every kind

[Dr. Patel]

Katie went through her surgery very successfully and she did well neurologically and her babies did very well. All of their obstetrics monitoring before surgery and after surgery was completely stable and they were born healthy boys.

[Chris Sturm]

At 8:52 Austin came out and I was kind of impressed after that because it wasn't a take a baby out, look around, do some stuff. It was kinda more of a rapid fire approach because about every minute after that, you're getting a kid. Here's a baby. Here's the baby. Here's the baby. You got a baby, you get a baby, you get a baby. Just handing them out. Handing them out like candy.

[Katie Sturm]

I was just happy that they came out crying like they did that made me feel a little bit of relief because first of all, I knew they were all like doing okay basically.

[Dr. Santiago-Muñoz]

There was a lot of planning, purposeful planning for this delivery. Everybody needs to know literally where they're going to stand.

[Dr. Patel]

Anytime someone's had brain surgery, the OB team worries about the potential for elevated intracranial pressures. You cannot treat a patient who is pregnant with a brain tumor, much less pregnant with quadruplets on your own. And you need skilled people from multiple different disciplines from neurosurgery, from OB, from anesthesia, from pediatrics, all to come together to have a successful outcome.

[Katie Sturm]

So I felt a huge relief from giving birth.

[Chris Sturm]

The entire process of dealing with Dr. Santiago, nothing was ever out of control.

[Katie Sturm]

I want to thank her as well. She got me four healthy baby boys.

[Dr. Ennis]

It's fun to work with a team of people who are excited to come into work every day and can still see the joy of a baby being born. And we have a large division in neonatology as well that we're able to pull from to get the manpower and the support that we need to care for multiple babies being born at the same time. So I think she really couldn't have had delivered in a better place.

[Dr. Santiago-Muñoz]

I think Katie's case went swimmingly.

[Katie Sturm]

The word that comes to mind about the care at UT Southwestern is impressive.

Back-to top