The Jones family

A rare event took place at UT Southwestern in August 2012 – the birth of quintuplets. A specially trained multidisciplinary delivery team of more than 50 UTSW specialists, nurses, technicians, and therapists managed the successful births, delivered in less than five minutes.

On Aug. 9 in Papua New Guinea, Will, David, Marcie, Seth, and Grace celebrated their fifth birthdays with their parents, Gavin and Carrie Jones, and 13-year-old brother Isaac.

About a year after the quintuplets’ births, the family returned to the island nation near Australia for their missionary work. There, Mr. Jones also works as a helicopter pilot and Ms. Jones as a lab technician.

“I don’t know how we would have survived if we hadn’t had the encouragement and constant devotion of the UT Southwestern nurses, doctors, and respiratory therapists,” Ms. Jones said. “It really felt like a family – a delightful place to be despite the machines beeping and keeping our kids alive. It was hard to leave our little ones in the hospital when we went home, but I knew they were in the best possible hands.”

The quintuplet births on Aug. 9, 2012, were the first delivered at UT Southwestern’s former St. Paul University Hospital – but also the third quintuplet delivery by UT Southwestern specialists. (The earlier sets of quintuplets were delivered in 1975 and 1998 at Parkland Memorial Hospital.)

Dr. Patricia Santiago-Munoz, Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Maternal-Fetal Medicine, delivered the Jones infants. Dr. Gary Burgess, former Medical Drector of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at St. Paul, managed their care.

As the siblings grew, they developed individual personalities and talents: David the natural leader, Seth the comedian, Will the strategist, Marcie the “mama,” and Grace the imaginative artist, according to their parents.

“The past five years have been unimaginably blessed, incredibly difficult (especially the NICU days and first few months home), indescribably cute, tons of fun, noisy and stressful,” Ms. Jones said, adding, “but the sources themselves are adorable!”

About UT Southwestern Medical Center

UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution’s faculty has received six Nobel Prizes, and includes 22 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 18 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 14 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The faculty of more than 2,700 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide care in about 80 specialties to more than 100,000 hospitalized patients, 600,000 emergency room cases, and oversee approximately 2.2 million outpatient visits a year.

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