“I remember calling my best friend and saying, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.’”
A quadruplet has welcomed a set of quintuplets.
The five babies, conceived without the aid of fertility drugs, were born on June 3 to Theresa Troia, a 36-year-old nurse consultant in El Paso, Texas. For Troia, the improbable arrival of three daughters and two sons felt like a gift from her late mother Lily’s guiding hand, she tells TODAY.com.
“My mom made this happen,” Troia says, sharing that Lily had originally been pregnant with quintuplets but lost one.
Quintuplets occur in roughly one in 60 million births, according to Dr. Rachael Morris, an associate professor of maternal fetal medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Troia, a single parent, said she was initially terrified upon learning she was expecting quintuplets. A cascade of questions raced through her mind: How would she feed all five? Change their diapers? Make time for each child?
“I remember calling my best friend and saying, ‘Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,’” Troia says. “I was afraid to say the words out loud because it would mean I had to accept it, and part of me thought, ‘No way can I do this on my own.”
Kyla, Joseph, Jaxon, Viviana and Isabella made their grand entrance at Las Palmas Medical Center during a C-section, in what Troia describes as a scene “straight out of Grey’s Anatomy.”
Because they were born at just 28 weeks gestation, the Troia quints arrived extremely prematurely, making the delivery risky. The smallest baby weighed 1 pound, 3 pounces, while the largest was 2 pounds, 8 ounces. Despite the high stakes, Troia recalls the experience as surprisingly calm.
“Everything was so well-orchestrated and rehearsed,” she says. “It all went smoothly. I worried I wouldn’t be able to turn off my nurse brain and just be a patient, but I was actually able to enjoy it.”
Kyla, Jaxon and Isabella are already home from the hospital. Joseph and Viviana are set to join them soon, completing the sibling set. All are gaining weight.
Asked to describe her life at the moment, Troia laughs. “Crazy!” she says.
Right now, she’s learning to recognize “all the different cries and personalities” of her babies.
At just 11 weeks old, she says, the quintuplets are already reaching for one another. “I know people will say it’s just reflexes, but it’s more than that,” Troia insists. When they’re touching, she adds, they stop crying.
“My mom and dad made sure that all four of us always felt special. They made time for us individually,” she says. Because they shared a birthday, each child got a “name day,” celebrated just for them.
“It’s so strange to have grown up as a quadruplet and now be on the other side as a mom,” she says. “It feels pretty surreal.”
