A mom from Massachusetts is celebrating the arrival of her four kids, quadruplets in the form of two sets of identical twins, on Thursday, July 28.
Ashley Ness told People Magazine that the babies decided to make their entrance into the world sooner than expected, but she feels amazing. All four babies - two boys, two girls - entered the world one minute apart during the delivery by Cesarean section at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston at 3:48 a.m.
According to the 35-year-old mom, she had been hospitalized there since July 6 to care for the delicate pregnancy. Ness' newborn quadruplets were delivered after 28 weeks and two days, which is about 12 weeks earlier than a full-term pregnancy.
Quadruplets will spend the next eight weeks in the NICU
A hospital spokesperson said that the babies would spend roughly the next eight weeks at Mass General for Children, where they are already under the care of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) staff. The spokesperson added that everyone was doing well and recovering because it was a busy night.
According to Dr. Ahmet Baschat, the director of the Center for Fetal Therapy and a professor in the Johns Hopkins Medicine Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, the chances of Ness' pregnancy are like 1 in 10 million.
Baschat, who is not involved in her care, added that if she were playing the lottery, if she were this lucky, she would be wealthy, according to Yahoo. He said that the phenomenon occurs when two eggs are fertilized simultaneously, and then each fertilized egg divides again.
Baschat explained that because each split egg remains encased in its own placenta, unlike traditional quadruplets where each of the four would represent an individually fertilized egg and be encased separately, two sets of identical twins ended up being the result.
Baschat, a 30-year veteran of his field, said it is a high-risk pregnancy ahead of Ness' delivery. He revealed that he had not seen this variety of pregnancy, saying they see a lot of rare stuff, but this is the first time he is hearing this in his entire career.
Ultrasound technician and Ness both shocked by the results
The same feeling goes for the ultrasound technician who first detected the group of four babies and delivered the news to a shocked Ness. She said that the technician had to step out of the room to Google it to make sure.
The last thing she had expected to hear when she visited her gynecologist back in February was that she was pregnant. Ness went there with a straightforward goal, and that was to renew her birth control prescription. It took two more weeks for Ness to find out how pregnant she was, according to 9Honey.
Ness is a part-time hair stylist who shares a three-bedroom home in Taunton, Massachusetts, with her 8-year-old daughter, Chanel, and her 47-year-old boyfriend Val, a small-engine mechanic. Also living in the home are his two youngest sons, 10-year-old Isaiah and seven-year-old Zayden.
