In the traditional Chinese concept, it is believed that there are many children and many blessings, and the more children are born, the more complete the family and the happier the life.
However, such a statement is also based on the premise of having children one by one.
For pregnant women with multiple births, having more children is not necessarily a good thing.
Multiple births are 16 times more likely to die than normal babies.
Pregnant women who are pregnant with more than three babies will face great risks during childbirth, not only the risk of fetal death, but also the life of pregnant women themselves.
In the town of Micun in Xinmi City, Henan Province, a rural woman named Zhang Xiaomin became pregnant with quintuplets and became a well-known news figure for a time.
The survival rate of quintuplets is extremely low, and from ancient times to the present, there are only a few dozen cases of all the quintuplets that have been recorded around the world.
This put Zhang Xiaomin at great risk of childbirth.
However, she still insisted on not giving up any of her children, and finally successfully gave birth to five children, adding another case of quintuples in the history of Chinese medicine.
Now, 17 years have passed since Zhang Xiaomin gave birth to quintuplets.
In the past 17 years, what kind of life has Zhang Xiaomin lived with her husband Li Canjun, and how did she pull the quintuplets to grow up?
Poor miner family, pregnant with quadruplets overnight
On a dark and windy night, the sound of work still rings throughout the night in a mine in Henan Province, and the miners are still toiling underground.
Among them, 46-year-old Li Canjun has done a very good job.
He is a well-known industrious man in ten miles and eight townships, who has done a well-known job in mining, and has been in the mine for more than 20 years, and is the old predecessor of many miners.
But even so, Li Canjun still came to the mine early every day.
While other miners find a few days to rest every month, Li Canjun works overtime almost all year round.
The work underground was night and day, and after some time, the horizon appeared at dawn.
Li Canjun also came out of the mine mouth, shaking the dust all over his body, relying on the rising sun to slightly dispel the exhaustion of the night, riding his motorcycle and embarking on the 20-kilometer way home.
Back at home, Li Canjun's wife, Zhang Xiaomin, happened to be doing housework.
Seeing her husband return, he quickly wiped his hands, went forward to take off his dusty coat for Li Canjun, and cooked for Li Canjun to eat, so that her husband could quickly finish eating and go to sleep.
Day and night are reversed, working for more than ten hours a day, this is Li Canjun's daily life.
Such a tense and tiring way of working, many people can not do it for a few days, but Li Canjun has insisted on it for 17 years.
The reason why I work so hard is naturally because Li Canjun has 6 children in his family who need to be raised.
In 1998, after being introduced by acquaintances, Li Canjun, who was just in his early twenties, met with Zhang Xiaomin, talked about love for a year, and then decided to get married.
After marriage, life was originally very satisfactory, and in 2001, Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin had a daughter.
The family is happy and harmonious, and after a while, the two people still want a second child.
Unexpectedly, it was this idea of the second child that made Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin carry a heavy burden in the next 17 years, and also enjoyed the happiness that others could not enjoy.
In 2004, Zhang Xiaomin successfully conceived her second child.
However, the performance of this second child is very strange, which makes Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin feel a little overwhelmed.
Ordinary pregnant women in the first one or two months of pregnancy, generally can not see the identity of pregnant women from the appearance, only to about four months will appear pregnant.
However, in the first month of Zhang Xiaomin's pregnancy, her stomach had already grown at an astonishing rate.
When she was two months pregnant, Zhang Xiaomin's stomach became further enlarged, and her reaction was particularly strong, she always couldn't eat, and she would vomit every day.
Li Canjun did not know what to do, and the people around him also said that they had never seen such an extraordinary pregnancy reaction, and everyone suggested that Zhang Xiaomin go to the hospital to see it.
Therefore, Zhang Xiaomin, accompanied by Li Canjun, went to the county hospital for examination.
The results of the examination surprised both people.
Initially the doctors decided it might be twins, but after a test on the medical device, the doctor said it was quadruplets.
Zhang Xiaomin has four children in her belly!
This frightened the little couple, they originally just wanted a second child, but they did not expect to be pregnant with four at once, and the hearts of the two people were both happy and worried.
Happily, rural China has always adhered to the traditional concept of having more children and more blessings, and the more children there are, the more blessed the little couple will be.
Worryingly, the cost of four children plus the eldest daughter born before, a total of five children, is likely to make Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin unable to support.
In this regard, the doctors of the hospital also expressed the hope that Zhang Xiaomin could carry out tire reduction treatment.
Because once a pregnant woman becomes pregnant, her physical function will be much worse than before, and the nutrition will be taken away by the child in the belly.
Zhang Xiaomin's physical condition itself is average, and if she forcibly gives birth to quadruplets, it may pose a threat to her life, or may leave sequelae in the process of childbirth.
What's more, giving birth to quadruplets at the same time has the probability of dying prematurely.
Reducing the fetus in advance is not only conducive to Zhang Xiaomin's body, but also conducive to the survival of children.
Listening to the doctor's advice, Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin fell into a dilemma.
Every child in Zhang Xiaomin's belly is the crystallization of their love, and it is unbearable to abandon any of them, but if they do not abandon, it will bring risks to Zhang Xiaomin and the child.
After thinking about it again and again, Li Canjun couldn't make up his mind, or Zhang Xiaomin made the final decision - life!
Zhang Xiaomin felt that no matter which child was abandoned, when the surviving children grew up in the future, she would not have a face to face them.
What's more, zhang Xiaomin was already three or four months pregnant when making the decision, and the child in her belly was already very large.
Even if one or two are to be lost with fetal reduction surgery, the remaining children may be in danger.
In this way, Zhang Xiaomin and Li Canjun returned home, pregnant with four children in their stomachs, and began to raise babies.
Premature births were born in less than a month, and quadruplets became pentapods
In the blink of an eye, Zhang Xiaomin was 30 weeks pregnant.
In these 30 weeks, Zhang Xiaomin's stomach grew larger and faster.
Later, the neighbors said that Zhang Xiaomin's stomach looked like it was about to burst, which was very frightening.
Such a stomach has also brought a lot of inconvenience to Zhang Xiaomin's life, cooking has been very difficult, and it is completely impossible to go to the toilet independently, and she must have a family to help her.
One night in the 31st week of pregnancy, Zhang Xiaomin suddenly felt unwell.
After waking up from sleep, he found that his lower body was abnormal, and immediately contacted the hospital and sent it to the Maternal and Child Health Hospital in Henan for diagnosis and treatment.
Along the way, Zhang Xiaomin was very afraid, afraid that his child would not be able to save it.
Unexpectedly, after arriving at the hospital, the doctor made a simple judgment that the amniotic fluid had been broken, which was a precursor to imminent childbirth.
Generally speaking, ordinary pregnant women are pregnant for 40 weeks before they come to the pot, so Zhang Xiaomin thinks that she is a miscarriage, not a childbirth.
Knowing that she was about to give birth, Zhang Xiaomin's original fear turned into joy, but at the same time she had worry
——I am pregnant for a quarter less time than other pregnant women, and there are four children in my belly, can these children really live healthily?
But at that critical moment, there was no time for Zhang Xiaomin to worry.
She was pushed into the operating room for a caesarean section.
November 21, 2004, was the day the child in Zhang Xiaomin's belly was born.
She still remembers the busy but heartwarming scene.
According to Zhang Xiaomin, whether it was when she was initially examined or when she entered the operating room for a caesarean section, doctors and nurses thought she had quadruplets in her stomach.
Therefore, four children were born one after another, and many people thought that the operation was successfully over.
Unexpectedly, when everyone was full of joy to welcome the arrival of the four new lives, the doctor found that Zhang Xiaomin still had a child in her belly.
This immediately made the paramedics present tense up and once again devote themselves to the delivery of the fifth child.
In the end, Zhang Xiaomin gave birth to quintuplets, one more than the doctor had originally expected, which surprised everyone present.
But this is not the time to rest assured, because Zhang Xiaomin was only pregnant for 31 weeks, which is premature birth.
There are five more children in the belly, and each child shares the nutrition from Zhang Xiaomin.
Therefore, the five children weighed between 1 kg and 1.5 kg, which was a very light premature baby.
For comparison, the average baby born at term should weigh more than 3 kg.
It is conceivable that the quintuplets born to Zhang Xiaomin are far less physically conditioned than other babies.
Shortly after the birth of the five children, Li Canjun outside the operating room received a notice of the child's critical illness.
All five children were in critical condition and were admitted to the intensive care unit for treatment.
This upset Li Canjun and brought a lot of financial pressure to the family.
Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin originally thought that it would be enough to have a child with a few thousand yuan.
These thousands of dollars are also a large part of their savings that they can take out of their hands if the economic situation is not very good.
But who knew that after giving birth to quintuplets, the cost of rescuing the five children and the cost of taking care of Zhang Xiaomin added up to as much as 100,000, making Li Canjun unable to bear it.
But the wife and children are still in the hospital and cannot be saved.
Li Canjun began to borrow money from relatives and friends, borrowing 70,000 or 80,000 yuan before barely paying the costs required by the hospital.
There are still more than 30,000 expenses left, Li Canjun had to discuss with the relevant person in charge of the hospital, made an IOU, and slowly repaid it later.
Fortunately, after a period of treatment, Zhang Xiaomin and the quintuplets' bodies have gradually recovered their health and the mother and child are safe.
This has also become a rare case of all quintuplets surviving in the history of China and even the world.
Soon, Zhang Xiaomin and his five children were discharged from the hospital, and the big stone that Had been hanging in Li Canjun's heart finally fell to the ground.
However, what awaits Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin next is an incomparably busy life.
Consuming 1500 yuan of milk powder every month, the family worked hard to survive
Among the quintuplets born to Zhang Xiaomin, the first four were girls, the last one was a boy, and the couple named the five children:
The eldest Li Ke, the second Li Zhan, the third Li Ning, the fourth Li Chang, and the fifth Li Yan.
The children were brought home, and how to raise them became a big problem for Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin to consider.
At first, when they got home, the couple couldn't tell who the five children were who.
After all, the children look almost the same, and they are quintuplets, and only the old fifth Li Yan is easier to distinguish because he is a boy.
On the first day of returning home, Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin did not close their eyes for a day and a night.
From morning to night has been busy with the children's eating and excretion problems.
Because there are too many children, Zhang Xiaomin's breast milk is not enough, li can only buy milk powder to come back to them to drink.
Because the child was too young, he had to be fed milk every few hours, which made Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin busy for a few days.
Sometimes after feeding a child, I turn my head and find five children mixed together, not knowing which one the child who has just finished feeding is.
There are often embarrassing situations in which some children are fed twice, and some children cry out of hunger.
The situation of excretion is similar, children are too young to express themselves when they want to excrete, they will only cry.
The five children cried for different times and for different reasons, resulting in Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin often misjudging.
Take the kids who don't want to go to the bathroom to the bathroom and leave the kids who really want to go to the bathroom in bed to wet their pants.
Later, for the sake of convenience, Li Canjun put a corresponding sign on the head of each child, which alleviated such confusion.
"Every day is like a war, exhausted, always feel that I can't sleep enough, and go to sleep at 10 o'clock at night."
After a while, Zhang Xiaomin and her family were able to take care of their five children with ease.
Li Canjun hurried to the mine and began to work more than ten hours a day, because the cost of the family was too much to bear.
Babies are in the process of growing up, eating 8 milk meals a day and consuming almost a bag of milk powder a day.
Li Canjun could not afford to buy imported milk powder, and could only buy domestic milk powder.
But even if it is domestic milk powder, it costs 1500 yuan a month, which is only the cost of rations to keep the children alive.
When the children grow up, the cost of children's clothes, tuition fees, and miscellaneous miscellaneous expenses in life are enough to make this family that relies on Li Canjun's mining to make a living feel extremely stressed.
So Li Canjun had to work day and night, often more than a dozen night shifts a month.
The hard work that ordinary miners can't sustain, Li Canjun is willing to do, so every day when he returns home, he is disheveled.
The way he often works overtime at night and sleeps during the day also makes it difficult for him to have a good interaction with his children.
However, no matter how hard and tired, every time Li Canjun saw the cute faces of his five children and eldest daughter and his big shining eyes, he felt that he had the motivation to make money and the responsibility to make money.
Zhang Xiaomin once thought that she would also go out to work to subsidize the family, but there were too many children in the family, and only the elderly parents could not take care of it.
The family can only live on Li Canjun's income of more than 4,000 per month.
4,000 yuan to support the couple, plus six children, so that the couple had to live a careful life.
When the children are a little older, they can eat ordinary food, and the consumption of rice flour oil and vegetables at home is unprecedented.
The couple often goes to the wholesale market and buys several large cabbages each time, in this way to lower the unit price and strive to reduce expenditure.
When it comes to clothes, couples may not buy a new dress for years.
The old clothes are torn, so I patch them up and keep wearing them.
When buying new clothes for children, they will also go to the wholesale market and buy 5 pieces at a time when they see the right clothes.
Many wholesalers think that they are merchants to wholesale children's clothing, but in fact, it is only because they have quintuplets at home, and there will be a discount on buying 5 clothes at a time.
Such a tight life, Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin lived for 17 years.
Although the family has not been rich, and the foreign debt has always existed, but the family supports each other, step by step to today, it can be regarded as happiness.
Li Canjun said that his greatest wish is to let his six children be admitted to college, and not to let the children because of the poor economic situation at home, so that the children cannot afford to go to school because of poverty.
So far, the children's performance is worthy of Li Canjun's hard work, and they are also moving forward towards Li Canjun's wishes.
Quintuplets grow up healthily and have the hope of going to college
When the quintuplets were two years old, they learned to call Mom and Dad almost at the same time, which made the couple who had been busy for more than two years feel very pleased.
What is even more gratifying is that the eldest daughter, who was born three years earlier than the quintuplets, although she is not yet 6 years old, already knows how to help Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin take care of her five younger siblings.
As they get older, each of the six children has their own development.
The eldest daughter was admitted to the medical school in Xinxiang at the age of 18, becoming the first child among the six siblings to be admitted to college, and also made a good start for Li Canjun's wish.
The remaining quintuplets did well in elementary school and junior high school.
Among them, the best score is the fourth old Li Chang, who will devote himself to studying every day when he comes home, and he will work very hard.
The eldest Li Ke, the third Li Ning and the younger son Li Yan have also won many school awards.
Only the second eldest Li Zhan has too much heart to play, and the learning momentum is not particularly sufficient, but it can keep up with the school's learning progress.
Since he was in elementary school, Li Canjun bought a tricycle to facilitate his five children to go to school and leave school.
Every morning, Li Canjun went to work in the mine after breakfast, and Zhang Xiaomin drove a tricycle with five children to school.
When school is over, he will also ride a tricycle to take the children home, which has aroused the envy of many villagers.
On weekdays, children are very sensible, as long as they are at home after school, they will take turns to help their mothers do housework, wash dishes, sweep the floor, wash clothes and so on.
Like being on duty at school, according to the weekly schedule, arrange the number of older people who should do housework every day.
The children grew up watching Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin save money for them to go to school, and they always kept it in mind, and usually never asked their parents to buy anything for them.
Sometimes give them some pocket money, they will also save it, and when it is time for the festival, they will buy gifts for Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin.
Zhang Xiaomin has worked hard to do housework for more than ten years, and as the children grow up, watching the children take the initiative to help themselves reduce the burden of life and let themselves do less and less housework, their hearts will always be very moved.
When Zhang Xiaomin first brought her five children home, someone in the village told Li Canjun that she could send one or two children out and let others raise them, otherwise the family's economic conditions would not be able to raise five children, and everyone's life would be very poor.
Send one or two out, and they'll live with the rich, maybe happier than staying at home.
These suggestions were rejected by Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin.
Years later, the eldest daughter who was admitted to college and the spectacular five children on the tricycle made the villagers who had offered to give their children to others feel ashamed.
It also made Zhang Xiaomin and Li Canjun feel a little afraid:
If the couple had listened to the villagers, perhaps the economic conditions would have become better, but the happy family would have been torn apart.
On the afternoon of February 6, 2021, Yue Jianhua, president of Zhengzhou Zhongkang Hospital, once again came to the home of Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin to visit the lives of the quintuplets, and also revealed the family's recent living conditions to everyone after 17 years.
The daily life of Li Canjun and Zhang Xiaomin is not much different from before, Li Canjun will work in the mines, relying on more than 4,000 incomes per month to support the family's consumption.
After the children grow up, Zhang Xiaomin spends less time taking care of the children and has more time to dispose of.
She chose to cultivate the land, the family's three acres of responsible land are all responsible for Zhang Xiaomin herself, spring planting and autumn harvest, can also bring a part of the income, can subsidize the family.
After the relevant departments learned about li canjun and Zhang Xiaomin's economic situation, they applied for a minimum guarantee for the family.
You can receive 1500 yuan per month, which greatly alleviates the financial pressure of the family.
In addition, well-wishers in society also provide daily necessities for the family to use from time to time.
After the birth of the quintuplets, President Yue Jianhua even came to Zhang Xiaomin and Li Canjun's home every year to visit the living conditions of the quintuplets.
Every time he came, he would send 500 yuan of red envelopes to each of the children, and after 17 years, Yue Jianhua was also close to the children.
In 2022, the eldest daughter is in the third grade of Xinxiang Medical College, her academic performance is very good, and she is preparing for graduate school.
Yue Jianhua also admired her very much, saying that when her eldest daughter graduated, she could help her find a suitable job in the hospital.
In addition to the second eldest Li Zhan, the other four of the quintuplets have gone to high school, their academic performance is very good, and the award certificates are plastered all over the entire wall of the home.
The second eldest, Li Zhan, suffered from congenital heart disease and had not been in good health.
Six years ago, she was injured in the head by an accidental fall on the school playground, and the hospital cost 30,000 or 40,000 yuan.
Fortunately, there were no sequelae, but some studies were delayed.
Waiting until she completes her junior high school studies on time, it is not impossible to enter high school and finally enter college.
Li Canjun is very satisfied with the current living conditions, although the work is still tired, the children's growth is better than he expected.
He believes that he can work for two more years, wait until the children are admitted to college, find a good job after graduating from college, and even if his task is completed, the future life will be endlessly enjoyed.
Every time he thought of this, the corners of Li Canjun's mouth would show a smile, which was the expectation and yearning for the days to get better and better.