Skip to footer

Identical triplets: UK family brings home trio of joy

Identical triplets: The Gilbert family welcomes home their three identical triplet girls after a risky pregnancy followed by six weeks in intensive care, and they couldn't be happier.

|
Facebook
Ian Gilbert shows off his three identical triplets, born Aug. 2, 2013, on Facebook.
  • By Noelle Swan Correspondent

Birth is a blessing. The birth of identical triplets is nothing short of a miracle. Just ask Ian and Karen Gilbert, parents of a rare set of identical triplets, Ffion, Maddison, and Paige, all girls, now eight-weeks-old.

Multiple births have become more commonplace with the increased use of fertility treatments, however the Gilbert triplets were conceived naturally and all formed from the same egg. (Fraternal twins develop from separate eggs and are not identical.)

The Gilberts had just returned from their honeymoon in New York when they learned that they would soon be expecting a second child – the couple already had a thre-year-old daughter, Faye. Eight weeks later, they learned that they would in fact be having three, not just one baby, when a technician detected three heartbeats while investigating Ms. Gilbert’s complaints of stomach pains, reports BBC News.

"We pretty much left the hospital laughing, crying, laughing, crying... But we were over the moon," Ms. Gilbert told the BBC.

Doctors considered Gilbert’s pregnancy to be high risk because all three fetuses shared a single placenta and offered the couple the option of keeping only one or two of the babies, but Mr. and Ms. Gilbert wouldn’t hear of it, reports The Daily Mail.

The triplets were delivered two months premature via Cesarean section on August 2 weighing a combined total of just 11 pounds, reports International Business Times.

“At first they didn’t look real and you could pick them up with one hand,” Mr. Gilbert said. “It was a bit of a shock.”

“It’s been crazy,” Ms. Gilbert said. “Their personalities are already starting to shine through and I can’t wait to get to know them better.”

Today, the babies are home with their 3-year-old sister, Faye, in Pontypool, a town in the Torfaen county borough of Wales, after spending six weeks in intensive care.

The family is still working out the logistics of caring for three newborns while keeping up with a 3-year-old. Ms. Gilbert to the BBC that her husband is pushing for another child – hopefully a boy – "But I'm not persuaded. I'm happy with what I've got."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Identical triplets: UK family brings home trio of joy
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/2013/1001/Identical-triplets-UK-family-brings-home-trio-of-joy
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe