Kimberly Fugate gave birth to quadruplets
A pregnant woman in Mississippi went into the labour room expecting
to give birth to triplets but delivers identical quadruplets.
Kimberly Fugate, who already has a 10-year-old daughter and wasn’t
planning to have any more children – until she found out she was
pregnant with triplets in November 2013, got a surprise when she ended
up delivering four healthy baby girls last week, The Clarion Ledger
reported.
Kimberly Fugate gave birth to quadruplets
One of the babies
FOX News reports:
When Fugate, 42, went into labor at
the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) on February 8, she
had delivered three healthy babies as expected. But then, her doctor
looked at her and said, “More feet.”
Shortly after, a fourth baby girl was
delivered – surprising Fugate, her husband and her doctor. Dr. James
Bofill, director of maternal-fetal medicine at UMMC, said the scenario
was a first in his 27-year-long career.
“I was very embarrassed, obviously,”
Bofill told The Clarion Ledger. “The news was sent to me by one of my
fellows. I thought she was kidding.”
Fugate’s ‘surprise’ baby wasn’t the
only thing that made her case so unusual. Bofill noted that Fugate’s
quadruplets were all identical – an extremely rare phenomenon.
“No one really knows what makes a
single zygote separate into identical twins or identical triplets, or in
this case, identical quadruplets,” Bofill told The Clarion Ledger.
“It’s definitely an accident; it’s not supposed to happen and, in some
cases, like Ms. Fugate’s, it happens in a spectacular manner.”
The baby girls – Kenleigh, Kristen,
Kaleigh and Kelsey – were born premature at 28 weeks and will remain in
the hospital until May.
