(WRIC/ABC) — One’s company, two’s a crowd and three’s a party!
Kristen and Tom Hewitt know that firsthand now after welcoming extremely rare identical triplets in Baltimore earlier this month.
Kristen Hewitt said that when the couple had their first ultrasound, the technician was unusually quiet. To break the silence, her husband jokingly asked “if there was more than one baby in there.” The tech laughed before breaking the news that the couple had not one, not two, but three buns in the oven!
There are very few absolute statistics about identical triplets because the incidence of one fertilized egg splitting three times is very rare. Doctors said the odds of babies like Thomas III “Tripp,” Finnegan “Finn” and Oliver “Ollie” being conceived without the use of fertility treatments could be as high as one in two million.
“Incidence of fraternal twins are much higher (90 percent) than identical (10 percent), but, it is even a more significant ratio for triplets,” said Victor A. Khouzami, who delivered the triplets and is medical director of Women’s and Infant Services at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.
Dr. Khouzami told ABC News that while his hospital may deliver anywhere between 30 and 40 sets of triplets per year, the Hewitt triplets are the first set of identical triplets born there.
Multiple births are higher risk for mothers than single birth pregnancies.
Kristen was diagnosed with preeclampsia a week and half before she went into labor. Preeclampsia is a complication of pregnancy characterized by high blood pressure in the expectant mother, and can be fatal if left untreated, according to the Mayo Clinic.
All three boys were born in “excellent condition” and are at home with their parents and Jersey the 11-year-old dog. The couple came up with a color-coding system of anklets and bracelets to tell the boys apart now that they’re out of the hospital.
