Do you remember your first ever pregnancy ultrasound?
Anticipation? Nervousness! A full bladder? Now take all those feelings and mutiply them by five. Yes, FIVE!
That’s what happened when US couple Briana and Jordan Driskell fronted up for their first pregnancy ultrasound to find they were brewing not one, not two, but five babies. One, two, three, four, FIVE! Imagine.
Five reasons to celebrate
The couple battled two years of infertility and multiple fertility treatments before trying a new treatment in October 2016 that paired hormone injections with the oral medication Briana had taken previously.
This new treatment came with an increased risk of multiples, doctors warned. A 20 per cent chance of a twin pregnancy and a five to eight per cent chance of conceiving triplets, quads or quintuplets. On 29 October, Briana had the treatment. An agonising two week wait followed, until the couple finally saw those two pink lines, for the first time ever.
The first ultrasound
And that was when they found out that there wasn’t just one baby. Or even two. No, there were five. Quintuplets. Incredibly rare, even for pregnancies resulting from fertility treatment. Doctors estimate the odds of conceiving quintuplets as one in 50 million. Briana describes it best; “I was in such shock, I couldn’t speak,” she told TODAY. “I just sat there staring at the screen in disbelief. I couldn’t believe there were five sacs.”
After a rollercoaster pregnancy, where Briana suffered severe nausea and vomiting, along with a scare at 22 weeks when it was discovered that her cervix was shortening, the Driskells welcomed their three girls and two boys into the world on 2 May, 2017.
Zoey Hart, Dakota Faith, Hollyn Grace, Asher Blaze and Gavin Lane arrived at 28 weeks via caesarian section. The couple and their medical team had hoped to reach 30 weeks of pregnancy before delivering, but preeclampsia concerns prompted doctors to decide that the babies needed to be born sooner.
The quintuplets are now home with their still stunned, but completely besotted parents. In between the dozens of nappy changes and bottle feeds each day, one of the baby boys has needed an operation to correct a hernia.
Friends have set up a GoFundMe account to help the Driskell family with medical bills and to buy a car that fits the whole brood.
Love stories about multiple births? Us too. Take another look at our article about the twin who thought his sibling’s nose was a boob!
