Frustaci Septuplets 1985
Septuplet Multiple Births
Frustaci Septuplets
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Before the seven McCaugheys there were the Frustacis.
On May 21, 1985, at Children's Hospital in Orange, California, Patti Frustaci was the first woman in the United States to give birth to septuplets. But unlike the McCaugheys of Iowa, the Frustacis of California were not as lucky.
Only three of infants would survive. And even after all that heartbreak, what began as the hope for a large family quickly became an ordeal of illness, money and media attention.
The Frustaci septuplets, four boys and three girls, were born by Cesarean section 12 weeks premature in Orange, California. Christina was stillborn. The other six infants ranged in weight from 1 pound, 1 ounce to 1 pound, 13 ounces.
Over the next several weeks, three more of the infants, David, James and Bonnie, died from hyaline membrane disease, a condition in which the lungs collapse after each breath.
At the age of 2, the surviving children, Richard, Patricia and Stephen, were found to have cerebral palsy. And a year later, there was more bad news, the children also were diagnosed as mentally retarded.
Sam and Patti Frustaci, who already had a healthy son named Joseph but dearly wanted more children, sued the fertility clinic and the physician that treated the wife with Pergonal.
They won a $2.7 million settlement on behalf of the surviving septuplets.
In late 1990, 5 1/2 years after the septuplets were born, Mrs. Frustaci, again using Pergonal, gave birth to healthy twins, bringing the family up to six children.
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