Woman gives birth to triplets, then nurse discovers something shocking. A Mississippi mom has given birth to a surprise fourth baby while delivering what she thought was a set of triplets. Kimberly Fugate learned of the surprise delivery mid operation when a doctor told her, there are more feet. Kimberly Fugate wasn’t prepared for the news that age 42, she’d be a mother again, but her unexpected pregnancy wasn’t even the most startling news Kimberly would get. Kimberly Fugate and her husband Craig got a surprise when they learned they were expecting identical triplets.
After three babies were delivered February 8, 2014, Kim heard a doctor announce, I have more feet. There was one more baby to come. That last baby, who had been overlooked on ultrasound, made her the mother of rare identical quadruplets at the age of 42. 2014 Voices Series Kimberly recounts the health crisis the four tiny girls faced, how she tells the quads apart, and what a big help their eleven year old sister is. I feel very lucky, like the luckiest mom in the whole world.
I wasn’t planning on starting over with more children and many things have changed since I had my quadruplets. Kenley, Kristen, Kaylee and Kelsey. It’s a lot of work taking care of even one baby, let alone four, but I don’t mind. It’s a lot of fun and they make it all worth it. Just getting up in the morning and seeing the smiles on their faces, hearing them COO at me and listening to the babble at each other.
The joy is overwhelming. I know every mom is partial to her babies, but I feel like I have the prettiest babies with the prettiest smiles and those dimples. The babies were the biggest surprise of my life and I couldn’t imagine my life without them. The past year has been a whirlwind. I was 13 weeks long before I found out I was pregnant and had the babies at 28 weeks and one day I didn’t have a whole lot of time to comprehend that I was having more children.
Everything happens so fast. Sometimes I still have to pinch myself and wonder, Am I dreaming or is it real? When the babies were born more than two months early, they weighed between two and two and a half pounds and were critically ill. They spent more than three months in the NICU and needed to be on ventilators to help them breathe because their lungs were so small. They finally came home in May and June and are doing really well.
They weigh between almost 18 and £22 and their doctor is pleased with their growth. They’re generally healthy. One quad has a mild case of growth disorder and is being monitored regularly. I believe that God picked me to have these quadruplets and I felt he would take care of them and allow them to survive. See how far they’ve come makes me feel very blessed, but there were a lot of very scary moments and their first few months were like a roller coaster.
One baby might be having a good day, but another having a bad day. There were times when I feared for their lives. Several of the girls’heart rates dropped, and I held my breath as I watched to be resuscitated. Kaylee needed eye surgery before she came home. I stayed at the Ronald McDonald House near the hospital so I could be close by, even though my blood family wasn’t there with me.
The other parents of ill children staying at the Ronald McDonald House became like my family, and the NICU nurses were awesome. When I cried, they cried. They always told me, we’re going to get through this. We’re going to make it. We did, and life has never been the same.
My family of seven moved from our two bedroom trailer in JS, Mississippi, to a four bedroom, double wide mobile home, so we have more space and we needed a bigger vehicle as well. Because the babies were preemies, their milestones are measured from my due date, which was May 2. That makes them about seven months old. Developmentally, they’re just starting to set up on their own, and they each have several teeth. When they were in the hospital, they were in isolates and couldn’t see each other at home.
Though you can see they really know each other. When they babble, it sounds like they’re having a conversation. I put two babies on the couch recently, and one turned and put her arm around the other like she was hugging her. The babies wore bracelets with their names on them for a while, but I took them off because I was afraid they’d put them in their mouths. I know without a doubt who each baby is.
They have their own personalities, little physical differences, like Kristen has more hair and Kenley is the smallest. The babies still eat every three to 4 hours, even overnight, and if they wake up at the same time, I try to feed them together. I sit them in the floor seats and give each one of them a bite of food and rotate through them. They’re patient. Moreover, they’re starting to hold their own bottles a little, so that’s a help.
They’re calm, happy babies. Nevertheless, sometimes if they’re all crying at once, it can be stressful. I try to get them what they need as quickly as possible and keep them entertained. Though I’m tired, I think this, too, shall pass. They go to daycare on some days, and I use that time to run errands or catch up on sleep when I’m home alone with them.
It’s all babies all the time. Caitlin, my eleven year old, is a great help. She helps in the evenings with baths and feedings. She helps get them to sleep. She plays with them and keeps them entertained.
I also have my family nearby to help if I need it. There are only about 60 to 70 sets of identical quadruplets recorded around the world. I feel like I won the lottery with mine. We received a lot of attention after the babies were born, and their Facebook page has more than 77,000 likes. Wherever I go, people ask me, how’s your babies?
I don’t feel any different, though I tell people I’m not the celebrity the babies are. That’s because they’re the rare ones. I’m just proud to be their mom. Though nothing about Fugate’s pregnancy was planned, she considers it a blessing and is relieved the quadruplets are here and healthy. Asked if she plans on having more children, there’s no hesitation in her answer.
This is it, she said, smiling. I know every mom is partial to her babies, but I feel like I have the prettiest babies. With the prettiest smiles and those dimples, the babies were the biggest surprise of my life, and I couldn’t imagine my life without them. Being mother for multiple kids at the same time is different. A mother beat staggering odds of 200 million to one to give birth to naturally conceived identical triplets, doubling the size of her family overnight.
Shocked, Katie Crawl, aged 26, from Pentre Mailer, Wales, said she and her partner, Rob Ellis, almost fainted when they were told their second child was actually three at their twelve week scan. Usually, triplets are nonidentical and are created when two eggs are fertilized and one goes on to grow into twins. But Katie is one of just a handful of women in Britain to have identical triplets known as monozygotic, where the fertilized egg splits into three after conception, it makes miracle tots Tommy, Joshua and Eddie, born by emergency C section on February 9. Genetically identical Katie and Rob initially had to leave the tops hospital Tags on in order to tell them apart, she said. When I found out I was pregnant with three, I thought we can’t afford a big car or a bigger house.
It was a lot to take in, but my Nana said to me, things happen for a reason and these are the cards life has dealt you and now they’re here. I just feel like I’m in a bubble of happiness. They’re absolutely smashing. The couple already had a four year old son, Jacob, born in 2015, and wanted him to be at school when they started trying for their second. Luckily, Katie got pregnant the second month of trying, and they excitedly prepared to welcome a new baby brother or sister.
But going in for their twelve week scan at their local hospital, Rex, a Mailer hospital, they were about to get the shock of their lives. Katie wasn’t as far along as she thought and was actually at eight weeks gestation with not one but three babies, Katie explained. I’d started to fit into my old maternity clothes and was getting a bit of a Podge, so we thought I was further along. Within 5 seconds of the sonographer having the scanner on my tummy, she asked me to take a deep breath in. I thought she was going to tell me some bad news, but she just came out with it.
I can see three heartbeats. I just knew she wasn’t joking. They kept saying to me, you’re taking this really well. And I thought, I’m not taking this really well. Katie added, we were taken to a side room.
I was crying, and Rob was white as a sheet. They said how rare it was, but they didn’t know how rare at that point. They thought it was two eggs where one had split. They told us all about the complications, but said, you can still have three healthy babies. Two weeks later, the couple returned for another scan, where it was discovered that the babies each had their own sack of fluid.
The pregnancy went swimmingly with Katie seeing her midwife weekly and being scanned every fortnight to make sure the little ones were developing properly. But at 26, the consultants in rexm began to worry. Tommy, who was the presenting triplet closest to the birth canal, Looked like he wasn’t gaining weight. He was convinced we’d find two separate placentas that had fused together. When he realized they were identical, even he was amazed.
He said he’d eat his words as if it was something he had never seen before. He said it was textbook stuff that he was seeing. The babies carried on growing at brilliant rates, and Katie was booked in for a cesarean at 32 weeks, normal practice with multiple births. But at 28 weeks, Katie, a former prison worker, Began suffering contractions. She spent five days back in Liverpool as they tried to stop them and was then sent home for bed rest.
However, at 30 weeks and one day, they started up again, and she was rushed by ambulance to the hospital in rexm. The plan was for her to undergo surgery in Liverpool, but there wasn’t enough time to get her there. Welder Rob, aged 29, was at her bedside as she had an emergency cesarean on February 29 with Tommy born weighing £2.11 and a half ounces, Joshua weighing £3.04 and a half ounces, and Eddie £3.03 and a half ounces. The whole team at the Mallard dealt with it so unbelievably. Well, I can’t thank them enough, Katie said.
I was so scared. But it was like a bubble of excitement. People were making jokes, making me smile. The whole team were amazing. Tommy came out and took a big breath and screamed, and the whole of the theater cheered.