Nadya Suleman with one of her babies
Nancy Pastor/Polaris
"The babies continue making small, incremental progress each day," says Mandhir Gupta, MD, neonatologist at Kaiser Permanente Bellflower Medical Center.
The infants, all of whom are still in the hospital’s neonatal unit, are off respirators, breathing room air and drinking donated breast milk. "None of them have passed the four-pound mark," says Kaiser spokeswoman Socorro L. Serrano.
The birth weight of the heaviest was 3.25 lbs. and is now 3.61 lbs. The littlest baby, a boy who was 1.5 pounds at birth, is now 1.76 lbs.
Serrano adds that, despite the infants' relatively small weight gains, the octuplets are all healthy and have no physical complications. "It just takes time for them to gain weight," says Serrano. "It's like watching grass grow."
In an interview aired Wednesday on the Dr. Phil, Suleman said that the healthiest of her babies would be coming home "in a few weeks."
