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ABC reported the story of Miranda and Josh Crawford of Charlotte, N.C., who became parents to a baby girl born in 2009 after one round of in-vitro fertilization. A year later, when Miranda was 33, they turned to IVF a second time.
As in the first attempt, Miranda's doctors transferred just two embryos, considered the optimal number of embryos for a woman under 35 undergoing IVF. About six weeks later, after two ultrasounds, what the couple hoped would be one or maybe two heartbeats was four.
But the babies weren't simply quadruplets. They were two sets of identical twins -- two boys in one placenta, two girls in the other, a statistical phenomenon. Dr. James Grifo, director of the NYU Fertility Center, broke down the math.
"Embryo splitting occurs approximately in one out of 100 embryo transfers," he told ABC. "The chance of this outcome is approximately one in 10,000. This could also occur in a natural conception, but the chance of that is much [rarer]."
Miranda developed gestational diabetes during the pregnancy, and she was hospitalized twice when doctors worried she might go into preterm labor. But the pregnancy went well overall.
The quads -- Mia, Madison, Jackson and James -- were born at 34 weeks, on Feb. 4. They only spent three weeks in the NICU before they went home.
The parents of five are adjusting to their expanded brood and have developed a system for feeding four infants at once. A sense of humor and the ability to be flexible helps, too.
"I might not get a bath or get dressed, but the babies do," Miranda told ABC.
