A Coordinated Miracle: OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital Team Delivers Quintuplets with Expert Care

On Monday, Aug 4, 2025, OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital welcomed a rare and remarkable delivery: quintuplets, four boys and one girl, born to proud parents Betsy and Dan Santiso. From the moment mom was admitted at just 24 weeks, the hospital’s high-risk obstetrics and NICU teams launched a full-scale, multidisciplinary effort to prepare for a safe delivery. With weeks of intensive planning, simulations, and coordination across multiple units, more than 50 clinical experts were in place to ensure the best possible outcome for both mom and babies.

Betsy and Dan Santiso are the parents of the beautiful five babies, four boys and one girl.

“It is hard to describe the process we’ve been through the past couple of days at least from my side of things where we’re like oh my goodness, they’re born, they’re here which is so exciting and then the next day its like not only are they born and here, they’re mine,” Betsy said.

“Having five babies puts mom and babies at high risk for complications, so we knew that they would be coming to our unit and spending some time with us, which she did.” Janie Haynes, administrative nurse manager for high-risk obstetrics unit at Riverside Methodist, told NBC4 reporter, Jackie Gillis. “She had been with us since the beginning of July.”

Betsy was admitted to the hospital at 24 weeks. She said the care she received was exceptional and made the experience even more special.

“It felt really scary at first and you know just to feel out of control, but the experience though has been great with people putting us at ease and helping us to work through all of our questions and to help us feel really prepared for what was coming next,” Betsy said.

With just about a month of preparation prior to delivery, Eric Liming, program manager of Nationwide Children’s NICU at Riverside Methodist told Gillis this entire process has been a full team effort with many teams involved.

“It took a multidisciplinary effort to pull everyone together to say we have to make sure we have the resources, the clinical experts available to take care of these five babies once they come out,” Liming said.

“Each unit had a really important role in the planning for a successful delivery,” Marie Cooper, women’s health director at Riverside Methodist, told Spectrum News reporter Cassidy Wilson.

The NICU team held weekly meetings prior to the delivery date, the labor and delivery team held huddles every four hours to get an update on mom and held brainstorming sessions for what both mom and babies will need.

“Then what we did is we took those brainstorming ideas and ended up doing simulations in the spaces we were going to delivering mom, so with each simulation with that team that was going to be involved was new ideas, new suggestions, new changes until we came up with just that perfect scenario,” Carrie Aurin, administrative nurse manager for labor and delivery at Riverside Methodist, told Gillis.

“The teams also developed a page system so that when anything changed with the mom, the units were able to page all the people that we had signed up to come in and help with the delivery so that we could get people there very quickly,” Cooper told Gillis.

When it was delivery time, there were about 54 clinical experts ready to take care of mom and the babies. Each person knew their designated responsibility and role; Betsy and the babies were in good hands, a lot of hands.  

 “Each baby had about 4 to 5 healthcare professionals assigned to them all stemming between NICU nurses, NICU providers, respiratory therapists, labor and delivery as well as a team for the mom,” Aurin told Wilson.

“I’m just so excited that they’re doing well, they have the care that they need,” Betsy said.

“The fact the NICU is here so close to home where we live and we can come down to see them, it’s a blessing to be able to see them,” said Dan. “They are in such great hands and the people here we really do trust.”  

Betsy and Dan named each one of the babies after trees - Juniper, Cedar, Linden, Torrey and Alder. Their two-and-a-half-year-old is named Rowan. For the Santiso's, it represents their love of the Lord and their faith. 

“With every tree we would research its history and what it looked like just to make sure it felt right," Betsy told TODAY.com. “We've been thinking about trees nonstop for months."

To view the TODAY.com article, click here.

To watch Spectrum News’ full story, click here.

To watch NBC4’s full story, click here.