First American Septuplets Mom Patricia Frustaci Dies At 63
Feb. 17 2018, Updated 9:44 p.m. ET
Patricia Frustaci, the woman who gave birth to the first septuplets ever born in the United States, has died. She was 63.
The Mormon mega mom died on Feb. 10 of pulmonary fibrosis, her son Joseph announced.
In 1985, long before the TLC show 19 Kids and Counting made big families TV fodder, school teacher Patricia and her salesman husband Samuel Frustaci shot to fame--by expecting seven kids at once!
Californian Patricia got pregnant after fertility treatments with four boys and three girls. She and Samuel already had a son, Joseph, 4, before the multiple births.
Sadly, one of the septuplets was stillborn and three of the other babies died within weeks of being born. Three children survived, along with Joseph.
It was the largest multiple birth in the United States at that time.
Joseph said the heartache of losing her babies and the long media storm was hard on his mother.
Patricia and her husband Samuel struggled to pay $1 million in medical bills; they got a settlement from the fertility clinic and doctor in a wrongful death lawsuit concerning the children who died.
Patricia suffered from what is now known as bipolar disorder, her son said.
"It was difficult. She's a normal woman thrust into notoriety. … the overall frenzy took its toll," Joseph said.
Patricia remarked in a deposition about her dead children, "There is not a day that goes by that I don't look at their pictures."
Joseph told the Mercury News that his three surviving siblings from the multiple birth, Stephen, Richard and Patricia, are still alive and doing well.
Incredibly, Patricia wasn't through having kids after that—in 1990, she also gave birth to twins through fertility treatments. But she and Samuel divorced soon afterwards.
Patricia's six surviving kids will "miss her deeply," Joseph said. "She (Patricia) was the funniest person I've ever known."
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