A mother gave birth to quintuplets in Egypt in July

She is reported to have been encouraged by doctors in Sicity to terminate several of the pregnancies from the outset but refused.

A 100-strong team of gynaecologists, surgeons, nurses and other specialists are on standby to handle any more births.

"The baby's clinical responses are exceptional," said Professor Vito Console, the doctor in charge of the births at Milan's Niguardo hospital.

"So far her heart, lungs and blood pressure are responding very well, much better than we expected," Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.

The couple had turned to fertility drugs after trying for six years to have a child. Mrs Mazzara had just entered her 25th week of pregnancy.

Criticism

A leading Italian fertility expert, Dr Ermelano Vinicio Cosmi, earlier denounced the way Mrs Mazzara's doctors had handled her fertility treatment.

"It's absurd that in the year 2000, a woman undergoing fertility treatment to have one child would be left pregnant with seven," said Dr Cosmi, who heads the bioethics committee at Italy's National Council for Research.

In December 1999 a US family in Houston, Texas, celebrated the first birthday of seven survivors of what had been octuplets. The septuplets were also conceived through fertility treatment, and also born three months premature.

The largest multiple birth on record is nine babies born in Sydney in 1971, but none lived beyond six days.