SEPTUPLETS: IT'S A MIRACLE

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None of that was on the McCaugheys' minds when they first went to see Hauser last spring. Their daughter Mikayla was 16 months old, and all they wanted was to give her a brother or sister. Bobbi had had trouble conceiving Mikayla; she had finally become pregnant after spending a fruitless year on one fertility drug and then switching to the more powerful Metrodin. Neither she nor Kenny wanted to wait a year this time, so she went on Metrodin right away--though, on Hauser's advice, at a lower dose. But while doctors can carefully control the number of embryos they insert with in-vitro fertilization, fertility drugs are basically a roll of the dice.

Once the McCaugheys had decided that Bobbi would carry all the babies, the priority for her prenatal care was simple: if the septuplets were to have a chance, they had to be kept inside the womb as long as possible. The milestone her two perinatologists were shooting for was 28 weeks, the critical point at which a baby's organs and nervous system are sufficiently formed to offer a good chance of survival.

It was an ambitious goal. The more babies a woman is carrying, the earlier they try to force their way out. On average, triplets emerge at 33 weeks, seven weeks before full term, and quadruplets at 31 weeks. No figures exist for quints and other multiples because so few are born, but the trend isn't encouraging.

To keep things as stable as possible, Drs. Mahone and Drake ordered Bobbi to bed just three weeks after the septuplets were discovered. On Oct. 15 she was moved into the Iowa Methodist Medical Center, where she could be put on medication to stave off labor and where she and the babies were within easy reach of the labor team that had already been assembled.

Surprisingly, it wasn't until Bobbi entered the hospital that word of her remarkable pregnancy became public, though it had been an open secret in and around Carlisle for months. That may seem incredible for anyone who hasn't experienced the close-knit solidarity of a small Midwestern town. But while Bobbi's condition was discussed freely in Carlisle, the McCaugheys' neighbors quietly agreed that word shouldn't leak to outsiders. Says Kay Scholl, who runs Carlisle Foods with her husband: "Nobody asked us personally to keep it a secret, but it was known that this was the family's wishes. I'm extremely proud that we honored that." Even reporters at KCCI, the CBS affiliate in Des Moines, who got wind of the story early on, agreed to keep it under wraps. "Even if the ethics debate was raging in our minds," explains KCCI reporter Steve Karlin, "we have to live here."

Aside from the antilabor drugs, Bobbi had no special medical intervention; her treatment consisted mostly of downing vitamins, minerals and high-protein nutritional supplements. And while the risk of miscarriage, high blood pressure or other complications was always present, she stayed healthy right up to and through the magic 28-week barrier. Finally, last Tuesday, in the middle of her 30th week, the contractions that had been kept under control by medicine increased to 10 an hour.