PHOENIX: Teresa Anderson, playing surrogate mother to a childless couple, Luisa Gonzalez and her husband, Enrique Moreno, gave birth to five boys at the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center here.
Teresa, 25, had met the couple on the Internet and she says she is waiving the $15,000 she had agreed with the couple as fee since she knew the expenses that Luisa, a homemaker, and Enrique, a landscaper, will have to face. She had intended to use the money for a course in nursing so that she can take up a job to support her family. She and her husband have two children.
The children were named Enrique, who was delivered first, Jorge who came in a minute later, Gabriel, who was third, then Javier and finally Victor.
Doctors said four of the boys can go home in three weeks, but Javier, who was found to be having a heart defect would have to stay back and undergo a surgery.
The babies were delivered through a cesarean section in the 33rd week Teresa's pregnancy, a week earlier than planned, because she was experiencing elevated blood pressure and other complications.
Luisa, 32, said: "I've been waiting for this for a long time. I cannot say enough about Teresa and what she's done for us. She has given me my dream; she has given us our family."
"Quintuplets are very, very difficult to carry," said Dr. John Elliott, who delivered the children. "Even for mothers carrying their own children, it is very hard, but "to do that for someone else is extraordinary."
Moreno and Gonzalez said they would find it difficult to handle the financial burden of caring for so many children in their three-bedroom home in suburban Gilbert.
Displaying tremendous will power and courage till the end, Teresa had actually walked to the delivery room, and never wavered on her promise to let Luisa and Enrique keep the fee for her services.
Normally, surrogate mothers are planted with several embryos in the hope that one of them gets fertilized. In this case, all the five did.
