Texas Woman Gives Birth to Two Sets of Identical Twins

I saw this headline a couple of times yesterday before I realized that what made the story so rare is that she gave birth to two sets of identical twins all at the same time! Tressa Montalvo had a Cesarian section on Valentine's Day at  Women’s Hospital of Texas and produced four boys, each weighing between three and four pounds. She had conceived fraternal twins, then each embryo split into identical twins. Montalvo and her husband used no fertility drugs.

The odds of delivering two sets of naturally occurring identical twins is somewhere in the range of 1 in 70 million, according to the hospital. Two boys shared one placenta and the two other boys shared another placenta.

Ace and Blaine were born at 8:51 a.m. on February 14 and weighed 3 pounds, 10 ounces (1.64 kg), and 3 pounds, 15 ounces (1.79 kg), respectively. Cash and Dylan followed a minute later, weighing 2 pounds, 15 ounces (1.33 kg), and 3 pounds, 6 ounces (1.53 kg), respectively.

"We tried to stick to the A-B-C-D theme when naming them," Tressa Montalvo said. "We didn't expect it, we were trying for just one and we were blessed with four."

The quadruplets join a two-year-old brother. The boys' father said they were going to try for a girl next. That's easy for him to say. Link  -via Holy Kaw!

(Image credit: Reuters/The Women's Hospital of Texas)