Every baby is special, but Karen and Ian Gilbert's children are receiving some much deserved extra attention.
On Aug. 2, the British couple became the proud parents of very rare identical triplets, ABC News reports. Delivered two months early by caesarean section, Ffion, Maddison and Paige are now doing well at home in Pontypool, Wales.
“It’s been crazy,” Karen Gilbert told ABC. “Their personalities are already starting to shine through and I can’t wait to get to know them better.”
The Gilberts, who already have a 3-year-old daughter, are overjoyed their new additions are healthy.
"We were just very shocked,"the proud mother told the BBC, recalling the day nurses identified three distinct heartbeats. "The lady doing the scan had to call somebody else into the room to check what she was seeing was right."
While the hospital offered termination services due to the risks associated with the pregnancy, "we just couldn't do it. The babies are ours," Karen told the outlet.
Identical triplets are created when a single egg splits into three in the womb, the Express notes. All three babies share the same placenta.
Experts seem to disagree on the odds of an identical triplet birth, however.
Jane Denton, director of the Multiple Births Foundation, told the BBC the odds of having identical triplets are about 160,000 to one, but other estimates suggest identical triplets occur in one in 60,000 births or even one in every 200 million births.
(h/t MSN)