Life With Triplets ‘So Much Better in So Many Ways’ Mom Says
Elizabeth Wells never though she’d be a mom to multiples, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. (Photo: Elizabeth Wells)
Getting pregnant with identical triplets without an assist from fertility treatments is so rare, the odds are estimated at one in 200 million. But one Kentucky mom hit that jackpot last year—giving birth to three healthy boys named Ayden, Carson, and Liam in August.
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And despite the chaos of caring for three newborns at one time, Elizabeth Wells, a nurse, is having the time of her life.
That’s clear from the recent blog post she wrote for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where she works as a nurse. In the post, she tells her story and makes light of the joys and challenges of triplets, such as taking hours to feed the kids lunch and painting their toenails different colors to tell them apart.
“A life with triplets will be different from anything you’ve known before, but it will be better in so many ways,” wrote Wells. “Alone time is certainly not as abundant as it once was, but I appreciate it that much more now and am always so excited to get back to my kids when I’ve been away from them. And, you will manage.”
Her journey to becoming the mom of multiples started a year and a half ago, when she and her partner, Chris Jarboe, discovered she was pregnant. “We each had a daughter from previous relationships, and we were excited to have one baby together,” Wells tells Yahoo Parenting.
Three identical new additions, shortly after birth (Photo: Elizabeth Wells)
Then, at her 8-week ultrasound, her doctor said she was having twins. “Every emotion went through me, but Chris and I ultimately were excited and happy,” she says.
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Still, Wells had a hunch. “At 10 weeks I was so big and felt so uncomfortable, I had trouble breathing,” she says. “I joked with people that there were three in my belly.” When she, Chris, and Wells’ 17-year-old daughter, Gabrielle, all went to her 16-week ultrasound appointment, they got the shock of their lives.
“While looking at the ultrasound as the technician was doing it, Chris suddenly said, ‘Oh my god, is that a third baby?’ The tech said yes, and then my doctor confirmed it.”
The good news was that the three boys appeared to be healthy, and the pregnancy was progressing fine. But as a precaution, Wells’ doctors put her on home bed rest, hoping she made it to 36 weeks before they planned to deliver the boys by C-section.
“Having three inside me meant twice weekly ultrasounds and weekly stress tests,” says Wells. Thanks to the ultrasounds, she could see that two of her triplets shared a placenta, meaning they were identical. “The doctor thought I was having two twins and a singleton,” she says.
Wells made it to 34 weeks and 5 days before delivering her three healthy boys, all in the four-pound range. Within 10 days, Ayden, Carson, and Liam were given the green light to go home —one that Wells and Jarboe bought when they were anticipating two babies, not three.
They look alike, but Carson (front), Ayden (middle), and Liam (back), all have very different personalities, says Wells. (Photo: Elizabeth Wells)
Though delighted with her new brood, Wells had some fears early on. “I painted their toenails a different color so I could tell them apart, that’s how similar they looked,” she says. “And feeding them was a project. It took so long to get all three boys fed, by the time we’d finished, it was time for their next meal two hours later.”
She only found out that all three were identical, meaning they came from a single egg that split in three at some point after conception, when Liam had breathing issues at 5 months old. Wells and Jarboe brought all three boys to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, and though Liam’s issue cleared up, a geneticist on staff did a test to see if they were identical.
“They were — an event so rare, the doctor couldn’t recall another case,” says Wells.
In her blog post, Wells wrote: “There is also now a theory—presented by a doctor who is familiar with my pregnancy—that Ayden, Liam and Carson are actually the only documented triplets of their kind. He believes the two babies who shared a placenta should have been conjoined twins but they somehow, miraculously, fully separated. I feel like I hit the jackpot three times in a row—I really am the luckiest mom ever!”
“I am ok with the fact that I will probably never fully comprehend the magnitude of how rare they are,” she continued in the post. “And honestly, I’m not sure it really matters. They’re my boys and these last eight months with them have been life-changing in all the best ways.”
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