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Joy Times Four
One Mom's Story of Delivering Quadruplets By Teri Brown
Imagine being told you were going to have twins and ending up with quadruplets. Imagine being pregnant with four babies and knowing that your husband's Reserve unit was going to be called up at any moment. Imagine that your babies, conceived without the aid of fertility drugs, ended up being two sets of identical twins – a one in 25 million occurrence.
That's exactly what happened to Christina and Patrick Tetrick.
A follow-up ultrasound was scheduled for the next week, and the Tetricks were eager to see the babies. But even then, Christina had this odd feeling there were more than just two babies. "I was so big that I was sure there were more than two," Christina says. "Everyone thought that I was nuts for even thinking about it."
Before the ultrasound, the doctor asked the Tetricks if they wanted to know the babies' sexes. Christina replied she wanted to know the count, and if the doctor happened to know the genders, that would be fine, too. The doctor laughed and began scanning. "After she just kept going back and forth for over a minute without saying anything I started to panic," says Christina, who thought something must be wrong with the babies. "I said, 'OK, you have to say something.' And she said, 'Honey, you've got four babies in there.'"
The Tetricks watched in disbelief as the doctor slowly counted heads. Christina remembers being very excited for about a half an hour, until the tech started measuring and everyone got quiet. "I started to realize the implications," Christina says. "I couldn't work. In fact, I wouldn't be able to work for years. Patrick hadn't graduated college yet, and we had just bought a house on both of our incomes."
