A mother who gave birth to surprise identical quadruplets has revealed how her life has changed since she welcomed her four daughters in February.
Kimberly Fugate, 43, from Jayess, Mississippi, who had been expecting triplets, was both shocked and delighted when doctors revealed mid-way through her cesarean section that she was carrying an ‘extra’ daughter.
But the mother-of-four, who also has an 11-year-old daughter with husband Craig, revealed to Today.com that, while there have been some scary ‘roller coaster’ moments, the large family couldn’t be happier.
‘I feel very lucky, like the luckiest mom in the whole world,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t planning on starting over with more children, and many things have changed since I had my quadruplets, Kenleigh, Kristen, Kayleigh and Kelsey.
‘It’s a lot of work taking care of even one baby, let alone four, but I don’t mind. It’s a lot of fun, and they make it all worth it.’
It wasn’t just the Fugates who were left stunned by the arrival of their four beautiful babies.
The likelihood of giving birth to quadruplets is one in 729,000, but the chance of having identical babies is ‘almost incalculable’ – around 13 million to one – and doctors at the the University of Mississippi Medical Center admitted that they had never seen anything like it before.
Sadly, the drama didn’t end their for the family.
Following the surprise birth of their four daughters, the Fugates were forced to endure many more ups and downs, as the young girls were whisked straight into the neonatal intensive care unit, having been born more than two months early.
‘When the babies were born more than two months early, they weighed between 2 and 2½ pounds and were critically ill,’ Kimberly explained.
‘They spent more than three months in the NICU, and needed to be on ventilators to help them breathe because their lungs were so small.’
And while Kimberly says that the ten-month-old girls are ‘doing really well’, she admits that there have been ‘a lot of very scary moments’ during which the family weren’t sure whether all four babies would survive.
‘There were times when I feared for their lives,’ she revealed. ‘Several of the girls’ heart rates dropped, and I held my breath as I watched two be resuscitated.’
Thankfully, the girls were given the all clear in June and were able to leave the NICU and return home with their parents and sister.
Since then, the Fugates have been happily settling into their new routine, which Kimberly admits can be incredibly stressful at times, particularly when ‘they are all crying at once’.
But despite the day-to-day chaos of raising four babies, as well as their older daughter Katelyn, Kimberly insists that she and husband Craig couldn’t be happier.
‘I believed that God picked me to have these quadruplets, and I felt that He would take care of them and allow them to survive,’ she added.
‘To see how far they’ve come makes me feel very blessed.’
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