Ethnic Maguindanaoan gives birth to quadruplets

COTABATO CITY – A 24-year-old ethnic Maguindanaoan mother gave birth to quadruplets in what is, for superstitious folk, a good omen indicating that the city will enjoy prosperity after decades of strife in the surrounding provinces.

The shy mother of the quadruplets, Kinet Maulana, has declined to talk to reporters, but her watchers at the Cotabato Regional Medical Center (CRMC) here said Maulana herself did not believe she could deliver four babies at home with the help of a traditional hilot.

The Maulanas reside in the Lugay-Lugay District, a slum area and home to the city’s poor Muslims.

Maulana’s husband, Bapah, is a pedicab driver in their barangay.

Maulana’s relatives decided to rush her to the CRMC after she passed out due to exhaustion.

Each weighing less than a kilo, the Maulana quadruplets – all girls – are confined at the pediatric intensive care unit of the CRMC.

Maulana was also given post-natal examination and treatment at the CRMC’s delivery room.

"We were surprised when the babies came out one after another," Maulana’s relative named Bai said. "We were scared because this was not normal, so we rushed her to the hospital."

Bai Sandra Sema, the former chairperson of the city tourism council, was among the first to visit the quadruplets at CRMC. Sema said she would subsidize the milk and vitamins for one of the four tiny newborns.

"I will ask my friends in the business sector to also pledge subsidies for the sustenance of the three other infants," Sema told CRMC personnel attending to the quadruplets.

City Councilor Abdullah Andang, a staunch child welfare advocate, led a short prayer for the quadruplets and invoked verses from the Qur’an thanking Allah for the gift of life.

"Life is a gift from Allah and, if I’m to interpret these multiple births by a Moro mother, I am convinced this is a sign that the city will soon have peace and sustainable development," Andang said.

Kalima Sanggutin, who was watching over a sick child at the CRMC, said she wanted to touch the Maulana quadruplets, believing they would bring good luck to anyone they touch, "but the nurses caring for them will not let me into their closed room."

The birth of the Maulana quadruplets was not the first recorded case of multiple births at the CRMC.

A Maguindanaoan mother delivered quintuplets at the CRMC in 1995, but all five babies died just hours after they were born.