'Sweetie, it's four': Couple floored after pregnancy scan reveals rare quadruplets
By Kate Kachor|
When Hannah Carmack fell pregnant a second time she felt as though her whole world toppled down on her. Now, she holds dear four special minutes in her life.
It was late October 2022 when Alabama couple Carmack and husband, Michael, first learned she was expecting rare quadruplets - two sets of identical twins.
At their first pregnancy scan, Michael said his wife immediately questioned what she was seeing on screen.?
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"She was like, 'Twins?' But the ultrasound tech didn't respond," he told Today.
"Then Hannah goes, 'Is it three?' Then the ultrasound tech put her hand on Hannah's knee and said, 'Sweetie, it's four'".
Michael admits he started laughing, his wife, however had a different reaction.?
"Instantly felt like I couldn't breathe... like an elephant decided to step right on my chest," she wrote in a December 2022 Facebook post.
"Anxiety and fear was all I could feel during that first ultrasound."
The shock left her in tears for weeks. She was flooded with concern, already felling the struggle to be a "good mum" to daughter, Emily, to be faced with being a mother to five.
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"I do believe my heart grieved for a while after finding out," she wrote.
"I hated that I felt that way because I know so many people are out there trying to conceive and I got blessed with quadruplets."
Quadruplets are only born once in every half million pregnancies. The quads are actually two sets of identical twins, making them even 'rarer'.?
Carmack, a veterinary technician, regularly updated family and followers with each pregnancy milestone, involving babies Evelyn, Daniel, David and Adeline.
Around the 17-week mark they ran into some complications.
"Baby Adeline was measuring smaller and had a less than normal amount of fluid. They thought that this may be a case of what's called TTTS - Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome," Carmack wrote.
"This is where one of the twins gives the other twin more nutrients and blood. As they monitored the babies they found that Adeline had irregular blood flow through her umbilical cord."
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With this discovery, Carmack was sent to Children's Hospital in Houston Texas to have a procedure done to separate the twins Adeline and Evelyn.
When they arrived the couple were told "everything was somewhat stable" and the risk of the procedure "outweighed the reward". They were sent home and were monitored twice a week at UAB Women and Infants Center in Birmingham, Alabama.
Early morning on March 14, 2023, Carmack had an emergency C section?. She was 27 weeks pregnant. All four babies were born within four minutes of each other and taken to the hospital's NICU.?
"These babies are miracles. We knew this already, but this morning I learned that our sweet little Adeline is?fighter. She's has always been one," Carmack wrote.
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"Adeline was the last to get pulled out, and I didn't know it at the time but Michael noticed that Adeline came out not crying or moving due to her umbilical cord being wrapped around her neck, he instantly grabbed my hand (I don't remember this) and started praying for our little girl."
The couple would have to wait 11 emotional days before all four newborns could be reunited together with their new family.
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