News

Identical Twins give birth on same day

Stuff, 23/10/11. Two identical twins in Indiana now have another birthday in common: They delivered babies on the same day at the same hospital. The Herald-Times reports 21-year-old Jessica and Jennifer Patterson gave birth Wednesday (Thursday, NZ time) at Indiana University Health Bloomington Hospital. Jennifer Patterson gave birth first to a girl, Adalynn Rose Patterson, who was born with a collapsed lung but is now doing fine. Eight and half hours later, Jessica Patterson gave birth to a boy, Mason Douglas Patterson, by Cesarean section. Jennifer Patterson calls the same-day births "kind of cool." Both women live in the tiny Lawrence County town of Judah. Hospital spokeswoman Amanda Roach says no one can recall the last time identical twins delivered babies at the hospital on the same day. View the full story on the Stuff website.

Tragic Chinese twins born with one body

Stuff website, 10/05/2011

Conjoined twin baby girls with a single body and two heads have been born at a hospital in south-western China. A staff member named Wang at the Suining City Central Hospital in Sichuan province said the girls were born on Thursday. Wang said the parents, who are farmers, did not want to have the babies at first, fearing they could not afford to keep them alive.

She said they transferred the twins to a hospital in the nearby metropolis of Chongqing to be examined by experts. The local Huaxi Metropolis Daily reported that the twins weighed four kilograms and measured 51 centimetres. They have two spines, two oesophaguses and share other organs. Doctors were quoted as saying it would be nearly impossible to separate them.

New Zealand Statistics

New Zealanders are only half as busy having babies as they were 40 years ago, but with today's larger population a similar number of babies - nearly 65,000 - were born in 2010. The 63,900 live births registered in 2010 was up 2 percent from the 62,550 in 2009, and the 28,440 registered deaths was down slightly from 28,960 in 2009, according to Statistics New Zealand.

The highest number of births recorded was 65,390 in 1961, when New Zealand's population was just 2.5 million, compared to 4.4 million in 2010.

In 1961 the birth rate reached 4.3 births per woman, nearly twice last year's rate of 2.1. The rate is calculated by how many babies a woman might have over her lifetime, based on the number of births that year The 54,020 babies in 2002 was the lowest recorded number of births.

The statistics show older women were now having the most babies, compared with their predecessors 40 years ago. Last year women aged 30-34 had 126 births per 1000 women, followed by 109 for those aged 25-29 and 77 for the 20-24 age bracket. In the early 1960s, women aged 20-24 had 265 babies per 1000, followed by 259 for those aged 25-29 and 152 for the 30-34 age bracket.

The median age of New Zealand women giving birth was 30 years, compared with 26 years in the early 1960s.

Other statistics from birth and death registrations released recently indicate that in the December 2010 year:

• 15 out of 1000 women who gave birth had a multiple birth, and 910 sets of twins and 20 sets of triplets were born.
• The median age at death was 77 years for men and 83 years for women, compared with 72 years for men and 78 years for women in 1990.
• Infant deaths (under one year of age) numbered 320.
• The infant mortality rate, or infant deaths per 1000 live births, was 5.1, down from 8.3 per 1000 in 1990.

Crown Denmark Princess Mary, Prince Frederik welcome twins on Elvis Birthday

8 January 2011: News from Denmark brings wonderful news of the birth of twins. Princess Mary has delivered two beautiful children, one boy and one girl. While names have not been announced, the details of the children were released. The boy was 5.9 pounds being 18.5 inches long and the girl was 5.5 pounds with 18 inches long.

The couple had been quiet on the sex of the children and only the immediate family knew of the situation which made a lot of speculation over the baby news. Today the speculation about the healthy child has stopped and the question of what their names has begun.

The birth of the twins on the Elvis Presley birthday had Prince Frederik making light of the day at hand. "We can call one of them Elvis for now." The multiple births means the 38 year old will stay in hospital for a few extra days together before being sent home. (From www.Examiner.com)

The-12-days-of-Twinmas

View this highly entertaining ditty to the tune of 12 days of Christmas from the Stuff website.

2010 Club highlights

Here are some highlights of the club's activities for 2010:

• 51 families belong to the club
• We provided 15 families with meals and grocery hampers
• We designed a new club logo and put it on all of our publications
• New membership cards were designed
• We changed our membership fee and the membership year
• We obtained over $10,000 in grants
• We purchased a hospital grade Medela Symphony double breast pump
• We published a new Equipment for Hire booklet
• We held 4 clothing grabs
• We successfully obtained Ministry of Education funding for our fortnightly playgroup
• We held 3 special playgroup events
• We published 6 club newsletters
• The club's website received 1600 visitors