the miracle and tragedy of the dionne quintuplets

Nurse Yvonne Leroux recorded in her diary: 'Five premature, scrawny, rickety, hungry mites - five in a butcher's basket-blankets under & blankets over, shirting and sheeting for cent dishes, no screens, doors or cleanliness, and mosquitoes at night & flies in the day. When the quintuplets exceeded the doctor's expectations, he and a team of nurses and assistants took over the household, pushing Oliva and even Elzire aside. The latter was probably the most sensible advice, for over-handling would assuredly have over-stressed the babies.

Allan Roy Dafoe, who arrived during the third birth, gave simple instructions: keep them warm, feed them water from an eyedropper, bathe them in olive oil, and leave them alone. The extraordinariness of their births superseded the quintuplets' own presenceĪt birth, the babies were not expected to live beyond a few hours. Their survival was certainly astonishing. Multiple births, almost commonplace today, were practically unheard of in the 1930s. The births of the quintuplets, Emilie, Annette, Marie, Cécile and Yvonne, comprised a miracle beyond anyone's comprehension. Nor could he have guessed what lay ahead for his five daughters. Oliva didn't know how, at the height of the Depression, he would feed his large family. Elzire managed only to gasp 'Holy Mary!' as she realized that their family had increased from seven to 12. 'Five!? There are five? My God! What am I going to do with five babies?' exclaimed Oliva Dionne on May 28, 1934, when his wife Elzire delivered quintuplets. 'Dionne Quintuplets: The Miracle Babies,' by Laura Neilson Bonikowsky, Accessed May 04, 2023, Article published Last Edited March 04, 2015.

'Dionne Quintuplets: The Miracle Babies.' The Canadian Encyclopedia. The Canadian Encyclopedia, 04 March 2015, Historica Canada. 'Dionne Quintuplets: The Miracle Babies'.

The miracle and tragedy of the dionne quintuplets