Pregnant mom Ashley Ness went for a routine doctor's appointment and learned she's carrying two sets of identical twins, one that happens in one in 70 million pregnancies.
Ness, who has a daughter and stepkids, conceived the baby without fertility treatments, according to KPICTV. The ultrasound scans showed the babies inside her womb were twin boys and twin girls.
The mother and her boyfriend, based in Boston, will have a handful when the quadruplets are born in October when doctors plan to have Ness undergo a scheduled C-section when she's around 30 to 33 weeks. Between the parents, they are already raising four kids, with the youngest child at seven years old.
"I need to get a passenger van now. I need an addition to the home. Initially, I was like, 'I need to do a lot,'" Ness said, anxious about the surprise pregnancy, but she's getting a lot of support from her friends and family.
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Rare but Natural Pregnancy
In 2002, a mom from Kansas also became pregnant with a rare set of identical twins without fertility treatments. Christina Tetrick was carrying four babies, all boys, two sets of identical twins. Tetrick had twin relatives on both sides of the family, but none with a case similar to hers.
Specialist Dr. Scott Robert told ABC News that what likely happens with this kind of pregnancy is that two of the mother's eggs are fertilized to form fraternal twins. However, during the process, those eggs split into identical twins. Had the pregnancy happened with fertility treatments, the mother would have likely had fraternal quadruplets.
A media blitz occurred around the boys' birth, and Christina and her husband, Patrick Tetrick, had to hire a PR agency to avoid exploitation. Everyone wanted to learn about Peyton and Parker, the first set of twins, and Camden and Christian, the other set, that the family also set up a website, which has since shut down.
In 2007, mom Meredith Woods from Indiana also gave birth to four babies without going through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Her set of twins, Gabriel, Gabrielle, Micah, and Maliyah, are both fraternal and identical. Gabriel is the lone boy among her sisters.
Rare Pandemic Twins
In the middle of a global pandemic, mom Jenny Marr had four identical quadruplets, Harrison, Hardy, Henry, and Hudson. She and her husband, Chris Marr, celebrated their twins' first birthday in April.
The boys, Harrison, Hardy, Henry, and Hudson, were also conceived naturally, but none of the parents had a history of twins in their family. Dr. Brian Rinehart said, via Dallas News, that Marr's pregnancy was fated because she was already in her mid-30s with a ticking biological clock.
Since the arrival of the quadruplets, the family has orchestrated a daily routine with Jenny, a dentist, focused on her motherly duties full time. She doesn't plan on working away from home anymore, as raising her sons is her purpose in life.
