Mother expecting triplets delivers ‘surprise’ identical quadruplets

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Mother expecting triplets delivers 'surprise' quadruplets

Mississippi woman's extremely rare birth brings four identical babies

A Mississippi woman expecting triplets got a shock when she ended up delivering four healthy baby girls last week, The Clarion Ledger reported.

Kimberly Fugate, who already had one 10-year-old daughter, wasn’t planning to have any more children – until she found out she was pregnant with triplets in November 2013.

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.

Click for more from The Clarion Ledger.