WALDORF, Md. (WSVN) — The family already has a 6-year-old boy and 2-year-old twins. Now they found out they are expecting triplets, and needless to say, the news took the couple by surprise.
Nia Tolbert, 28, says she knew she was pregnant with more than one baby when the nurse at her ultrasound appointment asked if multiples ran in the family, Fox News reports.
But then the nurse showed her the sonogram, and pointed out three babies: Baby A, Baby B, and Baby C.
According to Inside Edition, she decided to break the news to her husband by leaving him a gift bag with a note inside, saying, “Please accept this blessing from me and God. I think you’ll be overjoyed.”
Nia’s husband Robert opened it, finding three onesies and the sonogram inside. He says he fainted upon getting the news.
“Oh I passed out,” Robert told WUSA. “I hit the bed. I blinked twice, when I woke up I saw that some time had elapsed on the clock.”
The couple conceived all of their children naturally, and doctors said the chances of her giving birth to multiples more than once happens in less than one in a thousand births.
“It’s very rare to have two twins, then triplets [naturally] in the same lifetime,” said Dr. Rami Tabbarah.
It turns out Nia hyperovulates, meaning her body releases more than one egg at a time during ovulation.
“Hyperovulation is very rare,” Tabbarah told WUSA. “Eight people out of 1,000 might be hyperovulators, and those will be the people that get the twins.”
The couple says that, though they were taken aback by the news, they are excited to welcome their little bundles of joy in March.
“I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but I have to be grateful because we know so many people who struggle with having children,” Nia said. “I know it was a blessing and it wasn’t an opportunity for me to be afraid.”
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