JOLIET, Ill. — When it comes to pregnancy, Teri Nobles has had quite a run.
First she gave birth to her son, Logan, who’s 10. Then three years ago she carried twins, Marcel and Victor.
Now the Joliet woman has topped herself by welcoming a set of triplet boys on March 8.
Her doctors call the sequence a “one-in-a-million occurrence.”
Nobles’ obstetrician, Dr. Richard Barton, said such baby groupings are just about unheard of, though he did find a few other cases where it appears a woman gave birth to a single child, then twins and then triplets. But the odds are long, given the rarity of triplets, paired with the relative rarity of conceiving twins.
Making Nobles’ multiple-multiple births even more unusual is that her babies were conceived without in vitro fertilization or fertility drugs, said Dr. Vibhaben Thaker, a neonatologist and the director of the neonatal intensive care nursery at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, where the triplets were born.
The family has no history of multiple births either, Nobles said.
“We were shocked and excited because of how rare this is,” Thaker said of the hospital staff.
The triplets — Vincent, Santino and Andres — were born prematurely, 3 1/2 weeks after Nobles was admitted when she went into early labor. That labor kept up on and off for her entire stay, she said, while family helped out with the children at home.
As doctors worked to keep the boys gestating as long as they could, the decision to deliver all three by cesarean section came when Santino — who shared a placenta with his identical twin, Andres — stopped growing in the womb.
Santino was born the smallest of the three, at just 3 pounds 7 ounces. He was the first one to go home. Followed by Andres, then Vincent, a fraternal triplet, Barton said.
They were in the neonatal intensive care nursery at Good Samaritan for three weeks and home with their siblings three weeks before their actual due date, noted Thaker.
There is a large brood waiting for them, too.
In addition to Logan and Marcel, the triplets’ father, Mario Aguirre, has two children from a previous relationship, Brooklyn and Mateo. Marcel’s identical twin brother, Victor, died at birth.
Nobles said Marcel already can point out all three of his new brothers in their bassinets at Good Samaritan and keeps asking Mom when they will come home and if he can hold them.
The family is prepared, Nobles said. Her family and Aguirre’s family both live nearby and are volunteering to help. She has plenty of clothes from Marcel that the triplets can wear — and a closet full of diapers for the newborns.
She does hope those diapers last longer than a week, she laughed.
The supportive family helps, Aguirre said — but he noted that there aren’t many people in a similar situation who they can ask for advice.
“There is no one I know with a similar situation,” he said. “I have had a lot of ‘good lucks’ and ‘holy cows.’”
