According to Good Morning America on Monday, ultra-rare identical triplets were born to a U.K. woman.
The three girls were delivered via C-section two months early on August 2 to Karen, 32, and Ian Gilbert with a combined weight of less than 11 pounds. Ffion, Maddison, and Paige spent six weeks in intensive care.
'It's been crazy,' Gilbert said about his daughters. 'Their personalities are already starting to shine through and I can't wait to get to know them better. At first they didn't look real and you could pick them up with one hand. It was a bit of a shock. Now we've got them home we are coming to terms with it. They are starting to feel like our own.'
The Gilberts already had one daughter, three year old Faye. They became pregnant while on honeymoon in New York. At eight weeks Karen was experiencing bad pains, they thought they were losing their baby. 'We thought it was a miscarriage but it turns out it was three babies fighting for space, said Karen.'
Identical triplets are a result of a single fertilized egg dividing into three separate embryos.
'Because they are identical, they all share the same placenta and the same fluid. They all grew and fought so quickly it was practically ripping Karen's muscles apart,' Ian Gilbert said.
Karen was scanned every week to make sure the triplets were developing correctly. Multiple pregnancies raises the risk of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, a condition in which blood from one fetus transfers to another. Doctors recommended selective reduction, which is a procedure that aborts one or more fetuses. The Gilberts refused to even consider it.
During Karen's last scan, she went into early labor. Delivering the three girls who, despite only weighing less than six pounds each now, are doing well.
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