After fearing she may never have children, a New Orleans mother has beaten the odds and given birth to triplets — twice.
"I never ever thought we would be in this situation," Courtney Garrett, 38, told SWNS.
Garrett, and her husband Philip, 42, turned to IVF after struggling to conceive naturally and were ecstatic to learn they were expecting triplets after they had two embryos implanted and one of them split.
Garrett gave birth to two boys, Jack and Oliver, and a girl, Ellie, in September 2009. In 2016, the couple revisited the idea of having another child and decided to do IVF once again.
Garrett had a single embryo implanted in 2016 and soon discovered she was expecting.
But she was stunned when an ultrasound revealed she was having triplets again.
When triplets occur in fertility treatments, the siblings are usually identical because they’ve all come from one egg. In Garrett’s case, however, something miraculous happened.
She became pregnant naturally around the same time as conceiving twins via IVF.
Garrett was shocked at the news.
"The ultrasound came up and we could see there were two circles, so I was like, 'Wait a minute,” Garrett said. "We were really shocked and in disbelief, but any anxiety was overshadowed by the pure excitement.”
The triplets, all girls, were born last February.
"It just makes my heart swell to see all these beautiful babies and think they are mine,” Garrett said. “"I never ever thought we would be in this situation.”
According to the couple's fertility doctor, Sissy Sartor, the chance of that happening, combined with giving birth to two sets of triplets, is "extremely rare."
"There are a few people in the world with two sets of triplets but certainly not any that happened in these sort of circumstances,” Sartor said.
The mother said the siblings all get along well.
"It has been really cool to see how wonderfully the older triplets have adapted to having their three new sisters," Garrett said.
