Giving Birth to Twins, Multiples Costs More, Study Says

Giving birth to twins or multiple babies can not only be more difficult for the mother, but it is also more costly for the parents, a new study said Monday.

Researchers looked at data on nearly 438,000 births by U.S. women aged 19 to 45, between January 2005 and September 2010. Of those births, 97 percent were single babies, about 2.85 percent were twins, and 0.13 percent were triplets or more, according to the study appearing Nov. 11 in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The study found that the average health care costs were more than $400,000 for three-baby or more pregnancies, $105,000 for twins and $21,000 for singletons. This shows costs for triplets or more were twenty times higher than the costs for delivering single baby. The costs in the data includes medical expenses during 27 weeks before as well as up to 30 days after the delivery of the baby or babies.

"By taking a broad approach, we have shown that medical expenses attributable to mothers and infants varied according to birth multiplicity," lead investigator Dr. Dongmu Zhang of Global Health Outcomes, Merck & Co, said in a statement. 

Zhang and his colleagues found much of this cost was due to mothers with twins or multiplets having pre-existing conditions or developing illnesses during this timeframe. Mothers with twins or more had significantly higher rates of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, edema/renal disease, genitourinary infection, thyroid disease, anemia, and conditions in the reproductive tract.

"On average, combined all-cause healthcare expenses for mothers with twins or higher-order multiple births were about five to 20 times more expensive, respectively, than singleton delivery," Zhang said. "The greater expenses were likely to have been due to increased maternal morbidities, significantly increased use of cesarean section and longer hospital stay for the deliveries in women with multiple pregnancies; and increased admission and longer stay in NICU for neonates of multiple gestations."