Baby doctors, nurses seeing triple at downtown Fresno hospital

If they were a baseball team, nurses and doctors at Community Regional Medical Center completed a triple play this month, delivering three sets of triplets within days of each other.

And their delivery streak isn’t over. A fourth set of triplets likely will be nestled into incubators soon.

In his 30 years as a neonatologist, Dr. Steven Elliott has handled as many as five sets of twins at one time, but he can’t remember having three sets of triplets simultaneously under his watch.

And the imminent fourth set of triplets makes him slightly incredulous.

“It’s time to buy a lottery ticket,” Elliott joked during an interview Monday afternoon outside one of the triplets’ rooms in the downtown Fresno hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.

All nine of the babies, born by Cesarean section, were doing well, Elliott said.

The triplets came in quick succession: one set born the week of June 7, another on June 18 and the third set, appropriately three days later, on June 21, aptly, Father’s Day.

Two of the sets of triplets were spontaneous — ovulation-inducing drugs and assisted reproductive technologies were not involved in their conception.

Triplets are rare: about 120 out of 100,000 live births in the United States.

Multiple births have been associated with fertility therapies and older age of the mother.

April Delgado, 38, said her age could have increased her chances. She has eight other children — five girls and three boys — but none were multiples.

The triplets will be her last children, she said, and laughed.

Delgado was speechless when she learned she was carrying three babies. “I thought they were lying,” she said.

Now, she sees it as a blessing, she said.

Mother Nature had a hand in her triplets. Two of the babies — Avery Madison and Leah Michelle — are identical twins, developing from a single egg that split. Their singleton sister, Jennie Kristine, developed from a separate, second fertilized egg.

Avery and Leah each weighed 3 pounds, 14 ounces when they were born June 18 at 33 weeks gestation. Jennie weighed 3 pounds 10 ounces. The three sisters share the same black hair, and in Delgado’s eyes, “they all look alike.”

Down the hall, first-time mom Christina Ramos stepped back as cameras were pointed at her triplets, Genesis Camila, Matias Emiliano and Aarón Sebastian, who were born Sunday. The triplets were 10 weeks premature. Genesis weighed 3 pounds 2 ounces, Matias 3 pounds, 1 ounce and Aarón 3 pounds 9 ounces.

For Ramos, 27, the odds for a spontaneous multiple birth were stacked in her favor. There are twins in her family: an aunt and a great-aunt had twins. But a triplet pregnancy caught her by surprise, and husband Oscar Martinez, an air conditioner repairman, “turned pale” when he learned there were three babies.

Parents of the third set of triplets wanted privacy.

On another floor of the hospital, pregnant Stacie Trasoras, 37, sat up in her bed, fetal monitors beeping in the background.

Trasoras knows she’s carrying the fourth set of triplets. Her babies aren’t due until Aug. 27, but could be born much sooner and join the three sets in the neonatal intensive care unit. “I was thinking we’d be the only ones” with triplets in the hospital, she said.

Twins run in both her and her husband’s families, she said, but the triplets were conceived after one month’s treatment with an ovulation-inducing drug, Trasoras said. She has a 20-year-old son, who is in the Marines. The girls will be the first children with her husband, Tony, who is a Marine.

When she learned she was having triplets, Trasoras said, “I laughed hysterically for an hour.”

She’s calmer now. The three babies will require multitasking, but Trasoras said that’s something she’s used to handling as a teacher.

At some point, she’d like to get in touch with the other triplet moms, Trasoras said. “It’s a good idea to have groups together and other parents you can rely upon.”

They won’t have to wait too long — the neonatal intensive care unit holds a reunion for babies and parents every fall.

This story was originally published June 22, 2015 at 8:02 PM with the headline "Baby doctors, nurses seeing triple at downtown Fresno hospital."