A woman in Dallas, Texas has given birth to rare identical quadruplets in the midst of the ᴄᴏʀᴏɴᴀᴠɪʀᴜs ᴘᴀɴᴅᴇᴍɪᴄ. The odds of having identical quadruplets are incredibly small, estimated to be around one in 15 million.
Jenny Marr and her husband Chris, both aged 35, welcomed their four adorable sons on March 15th – and told Good Morning America they were “absolutely floored” by their arrival. The family has spent 10 weeks in Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas’ N.I.C.U and close to a month in the Special Care Nursery, but can now finally return home.
Jenny went into labour when she was 28.5 weeks pregnant, just as the US went into lockdown. “I anticipated the worst,” she told Today. “Maybe we were going to have sick babies and they were going to be in the N.I.C.U.”
But Jenny’s ᴄᴀᴇsᴀʀᴇᴀɴ sᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ delivery was a success, with Harrison Foy, Henry William, Hudson Perry and Hardy Smith Marr born within three minutes of each other. “It’s incredible,” said Jenny. “We called them our baby birds because they really looked like baby birds.”
Sharing a sweet snap of her sleeping brood alongside pet pooch Zeke on Facebook, Jenny thanked the N.I.C.U and special care doctors and nurses. “Having babies during a global ᴘᴀɴᴅᴇᴍɪᴄ has been quite an experience,” she said. “Everyone at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas made us and our babies a priority for care and safety. I only hope that one day I can hug each of them and say thank you. Thank you for getting our sweet preemie babies into the world safely, for believing in them that they could exceed all expectations.
“We never heard bad news, we never really had to worry. We welcomed into the world four healthy incredible babies. And now after just under two months they are all home.”
The couple was initially told they were expecting triplets in November 2019, but a follow-up scan just a week later told otherwise. “The tech – who was doing the initial (scan) – she gave me a funny look. We were like, ‘Oh what’s going on now?’ We got worried again,'” Chris told Today. “She said, ‘I’m not supposed to say this, but y’all got four babies.'”
Now the family is back home and getting used to a rota of feedings every three hours – and admitted in an interview with Fox News that they struggle to tell them apart. Jenny joked: “Oh my gosh, we can’t tell them apart, it’s so bad. I actually lined them up for a photo and showed Chris and said ‘which one’s which?’ I sent it to my family too, and nobody got it right.”
Both Jenny and Chris have no history of multiples in their family – which makes their quadruplets even rarer. Medical staff at Texas Health Dallas said in a Facebook post that “there are only about 72 documented cases of spontaneous, identical quadruplets”.