r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 7h ago
A couple’s 36 hour train ride home with their quintuplets became a community effort: railway staff carried luggage and moved them to a lower berth, while fellow passengers took turns feeding, holding and soothing the five babies so the parents could rest.
https://amp.scmp.com/news/people-culture/trending-china/article/3371231/strangers-and-railway-staff-help-chinese-couple-bring-quintuplets-home-train525
u/Nyardyn 7h ago
Having quintuplets would be a nightmare, I'm ao glad they're rare af...
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u/IHkumicho 6h ago
Natural quintuplets is rare af. With
fertility drugsgod's will anything is possible.48
u/AnonymousCat21 5h ago
IVF and embryo testing have come a long way, to the point not nearly as many need to be implanted. Multiple births are much less common.
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u/antiduh 5h ago
We specifically asked for one embryo at a time. Our doctors considered it unethical to do anything else.
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u/fireandlifeincarnate 4h ago
What would be unethical about potential twins?
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u/bitofapuzzler 4h ago
Child birth is dangerous, more so with multiple births.
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u/CrisVas3 4h ago
Multiple unexpected expenditures, exponential risk of harm to the mother, etc etc…
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u/thoph 5h ago
No one is transferring five embryos. This is an exceedingly rare outcome.
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u/Mistake_Not_101010 4h ago
What about octomom?
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u/Leasshunte 4h ago
That was an exceedingly rare outcome, even in the days when multiple implantations were more common. There's a reason we know about her.
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u/hanimal16 7h ago
Five strollers?! I feel like they could’ve benefited from a quad stroller and a baby carrier.
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u/theacearrow 5h ago
even dual strollers suck ass for navigating. They're too wide for doorways.
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u/ThievingRock 5h ago
We had an inline one that we liked and it fit through doorways and on sidewalks. a side by side is a whole different beast, though.
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u/bunslightyear 7h ago
there aren’t quad strollers for newborns but thanks for adding your passive aggressive opinion
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u/hanimal16 6h ago
I don’t think you know what passive aggressive means lol.
ETA: four baby strollers are 100% a thing you can put a newborn in.
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u/izzittho 5h ago
Why are you getting so defensive over someone suggesting that it would be nice if they had fewer things to have to push? Ffs.
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u/ArgentineBeauty 7h ago
Getting on a train for 36 hours and realising there are five babies on board must be a real “oh no” moment 😂 Fair play to the passengers and staff who pitched in to help the parents and make the journey as comfortable as possible for the family.
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u/saintash 7h ago
My sister took her baby on a flight to ireland. She had a toddler and 6 month old.
Five minutes into the flight they lost her 6 months old pacifier. Got away from them when the plane went up, rolled away.
The way my sister tells the story is my brother-in-law stood up and went." We need help finding that pacifier, or the flight's about to get awful."
They said the entire plane was up in seconds looking for it found it in less minute, and they got it clean and back in the child's mouth in under two minutes.
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u/runner64 7h ago
Reminds me of a video I saw where a bunch of footballers were leaving a game and someone found keys and they organized a chant that was like “whose keys are these? Whose keys are these?”with the entire crowd chanting and pointing to the guy holding the found keys.
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u/bicycle_mice 7h ago
As a mom of baby and toddler that sucks… but if something is crucial two is one and one is zero, ya know? Bring multiple back ups.
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u/bananagoo 7h ago
Seriously. I have like 16 pacifiers spread throughout all the areas I occupy during the day. Car, house, stroller, I even have one in my inside jacket pocket.
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u/E0H1PPU5 6h ago
My son is 2.5 and hasn’t used a pacified in a year and a half. He hasn’t needed one outside of naptime even longer than that.
I STILL find them all over because I had so freaking many of them!!
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u/saintash 7h ago
I think they were in the carry on bag. I think they were just trying to like, not have to pull out bags and go through them on the plane.
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u/Dewey519 6h ago
We just went through this with burp clothes.
We had 2 back to back and they both had reflux. The first one, we were running out of burp clothes constantly. But by the time we got to the end of the reflux phase, and now with the second kid, I think there’s probably 6 burp clothes in every room and bag.
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope 5h ago
Put it on a chain!
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u/Kaiowas1 3h ago
A perfect choking hazard
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u/Unfair_Computer5226 2h ago
They make safe chains that clip to the pacifier and the kid's clothes 😂🤷♀️
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u/chupagatos4 7h ago
When my second was 8 weeks old we flew 8 hours to my home country with her and my then 2.5 year old so she could meet my stepdad and I could say goodbye before he passed away. It was hard emotionally and logistically and we did everything we could to be well prepared for the flight. She cried 3 minutes during takeoff and I soothed her by nursing her. This asshole with a tricolor beard in the row in front of us who'd already been a nuisance cause he was loudly complaining to everyone around him about the flight stood up and basically yelled at me that he was going to need a good night sleep (it was 7 pm, we were in economy, nobody was going to get a good night sleep) and if he wasn't he was going to make me pay for it. I fucking hate people sometimes. He just made a difficult situation worse. Both kids were amazing and did so well given the circumstances.
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u/ISeenYa 6h ago
8 week old is easier than a toddler at that point. Stick a boob in & they're quiet. The toddler will want to rampage!
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u/chupagatos4 5h ago
Toddler was elated that he got to watch in flight entertainment since we don't allow screens at home. He binge watched cartoons and then slept!
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u/Kaurifish 7h ago
Or, how my BIL got away with holding a planeful of people hostage using a baby as a weapon. 🤣
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u/tnwthrow 3h ago
The entire plane? So even those sat 20 rows ahead/behind?
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u/saintash 3h ago
Well a I wasn't on the flight, so I can't say how many people were on the flight, Or how many rows there were.
I know my very similar flight, only had about maybe twenty to fifty people on it. We were flying to a place that was off Season, and a company that was new to the airport, so we're offering a crazy deal. And basically a decade ago.
So yeah I kind of believe the story. But you don't have to
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u/ZAlternates 7h ago
They likely wanted to make it more comfortable for themselves too, which means taking care of the kids before they just scream the entire time.
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u/TrailMomKat 3h ago
Not just 5 babies. Typically, you'd expect a 5 babies to 10 parents ratio, but this was 5 to 2. Awesome of folks to step up, I've given birth to 3 boys and i would've happily thrown in to help. Hell, I'd just be paying it forward, honestly. There was a flight in 2009 where my newborn son screamed for 3 hours straight. I wound up bawling my eyes out from lack of sleep and raw frustration with him refusing the breast, and the surrounding passengers took turns trying to soothe him to help me out.
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u/splithoofiewoofies 2h ago
I'm one ofthos fkn aunties who would be so THRILLED to be able to help. I know a loooot of folk would rather be annoyed but what do you mean I can snuggle, feed, and yes, even change (if the baby needs it obvs) to help the parents nap, please let me!
New parents have it so hard. Five babies??? 36 hour trip?? Oh honey no hand me a baby, let's hand another to this person, we're gonna need to prep the bottles let's gooooOoOOoOooo
I love being this part of the community. I hope those who helped enjoyed it, too. I hope they were able to calm the train for the many folk who hate it, haha.
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u/track_gal_1 7h ago
I don’t believe the naturally conceived part. I also feel like it’s pretty inconsiderate to not have at least one more person along for the journey to help with the babies. They relied on other people’s good will vs organizing help themselves.
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u/MargaretHaleThornton 5h ago
It's very very rare but is possible to conceive quints wholly naturally. The Dionne and Fischer quintuplets all survived to adulthood and were born well before anything could help with conception. They are notable for all having survived, but if you included quints where 1 or more died there would be many many more over history.
Odds of conceiving them wholly naturally are 1 in 55 million to 1 in 60 million, so again, it is very rare. However, over 200 million pregnancies occur worldwide each year, so every year there are 3 or 4 sets of quintuplets completely naturally conceived.
Now, it is even rarer that a woman births quintuplets. Nowadays most do selective reduction for their health and the health of the kids. And before modern times some of the babies would just die. But acting like something that happens 3-4 times a year is impossible disregards what impossible means.
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u/gloriiosaa 4h ago
also like... most of the time these aren't cases where the person dropped five eggs at once, there's often one or more sets of identical twins involved
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u/gr8scottaz 5h ago
If only you would bother reading the article instead of just throwing around assumptions.......
They 1) had the husband's sister (aunt) present, as well and 2) they didn't ask for help, the people on the train, after hearing of the quintuplets being on the train, lined up to come see/take pictures/offer to help feed the babies.
Why should redditors even post an article if 90% of the thread don't even bother reading it?
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u/splithoofiewoofies 2h ago
That's the kind of old lady I am. I hear there's five babies and a tired parent? I'm hopping over to offer to feed so the parents can rest. I have a very maternal geterdone knitting grandma who doesn't let shit slide demeanor so it works really well for me.
Aight mum, whatchoo need from the Granny Squad? We gonna mix some bottles up and start a feeding nap train, let's gooOOOoOOo.
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u/Meet_Foot 7h ago
Do you think quintuplets just don’t happen? Yes it’s rare, but that’s why we’re hearing about this family and not just one with twins.
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u/boosayrian 6h ago
It’s ovary-stimulating drugs she was probably on. They might be calling it “natural” since it wasn’t IVF, but I doubt it was with no interventions whatsoever.
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u/sjb2059 6h ago
The Dionne quints we born and survived long before ivf was invented. They were notable because they survived mostly
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u/descartesasaur 22m ago
I have definitely helped keep a very young child entertained on a train before, which was incidentally a great rest for her grandparents. It's a really happy memory.
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u/BrainRummage 5h ago
This is the wrong place to post a story about children. Reddit hates children. 35 year olds beefing with babies
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u/Shufflepants 7h ago
Alternate headline:
"Couple with a breeding kink make it everyone else's problem"
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u/ExpertRegister1353 3h ago
Nothing uplifting about squirting out more little goblins than you can handle.
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