When Marco Bernal realized his wife was pregnant with triplets, the man had to sit down on the living room floor.
“Are you crying?” Nylah Craft asked her husband as he stared at the ultrasound images.
“How are we going to do this?” he replied.
“The same way every people do it,” she replied. “We’ll be fine.”
Since the couple’s triplets — Elio, Elias and Enzo — were born at the Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center, Aug. 18, doctors there have been raving about the remarkable rarity of the pregnancy and the birth. Most of all, they are thrilled that the babies were born healthy and the mother is doing well.
“This is a very rare pregnancy and a rare outcome,” chief of neonatology Dr. Rohit Passi said.
The triplets were conceived naturally, Passi said, which happens in only about about one out of 10,000 pregnancies.
They gestated 36 weeks, a good time for triplets. And they all came out a healthy weight — a combined 19 pounds, about three pounds short of the world record total weight for triplets, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Even more rare is the kind of triplets Craft gave birth to, Passi said: Two of them are identical twins and the third is a fraternal twin.
Due to the risks associated with the pregnancy, the hospital put together a large team to help make sure everything went well, Passi said. There were nearly 15 hospital staffers there for the C-section, which the family asked to be performed on the father’s birthday.
The family went home about three days after the children were born, where the couple also had to tend to their older daughter and son. Their 2-year-old son was mad at his mom for bringing home more children, Craft said, but has been warming up to them.
It’s been tough taking care of five kids, Craft said, but her mom is helping out.
Craft said she was worried about how her husband would react when he learned they were going to have three babies. As for her, it was just about everything she could have hoped for.
“I always wanted a big family,” Craft said. “So I think it’s kind of perfect.”
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