Fort Worth-area woman defies odds, brain tumor to give birth to quadruplets
The odds of having a family one day seemed impossible for Katie Sturm.
But the Haslet woman beat them to have her first child three years ago with husband Chris. This year, she defied the odds again.
Sturm, 27, was three months pregnant with quadruplets in February when she suffered a seizure while at work as a medical-surgical nurse. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor, according to a news release from UT Southwestern Medical Center.
After a second seizure, doctors recommended removing the tumor during the pregnancy. The glioma was removed successfully in March at UT Southwestern.
“Once the tumor is removed, the risk of seizure decreases substantially, which improves the overall health of both the mother and the babies,” neurosurgeon Dr. Toral Patel said in the release. The surgery was performed during Sturm’s second trimester, which is the safest point of a pregnancy for the babies, Dr. Patel said.
On July 3, a team of 21 doctors, nurses and health care staff delivered the quadruplets via C-section 32 weeks into the pregnancy. The four boys — Austin, Daniel, Jacob, and Hudson — are the first quadruplets delivered at UT Southwestern’s William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital in Dallas.
“I don’t know what other way to describe it but to say it was something special. It was amazing,” Katie Sturm said of seeing all four boys for the first time.
The newborns ranged from 3.5 pounds to 4.3 pounds. The first of the quadruplets left the NICU after a month, and the last was home after seven weeks of care in the NICU.
“You’re never really ready for four babies. I don’t know that I was ready for one,” Chris Sturm, 33, said in the hospital’s news release. “There is no manual for parenting, so you just figure it out as you go. It’s been a great experience.”
At 16, Katie Sturm was told she’d never be able to have biological children after being diagnosed with primary ovarian insufficiency. Son Ryan, however, was born three years ago. Adding to the improbable odds of the now bustling family, the quadruplets were conceived naturally. That happens in an estimated 1 in 700,000 births.
“The boys really did quite well for what you’d expect for babies born at 32 weeks,” Clements University Hospital’s NICU medical director Dr. Becky Ennis said in the release. “Premature babies can have prolonged pauses in their breathing that will improve with time, and taking a bottle for a baby is like running a marathon. So they have to build up their stamina and they have to practice that skill.”
This story was originally published September 23, 2020 at 4:05 PM.
