Ill. triplets follow twins follow singleton

When it comes to pregnancy, Teri Nobles has had quite a run. First she gave birth to her son, Logan, who’s 10. Three years ago, she carried twins, Marcel and Victor.

Now the Joliet, Ill., woman has topped herself by welcoming a set of triplet boys on March 8. Her doctors call the sequence a “one-in-a-million occurrence.”

Nobles’ obstetrician, Dr. Richard Barton, said such baby groupings are just about unheard of, though he did find a few other cases where it appears a woman gave birth to a single child, then twins and then triplets. But the odds are long, given the rarity of triplets, paired with the relative rarity of conceiving twins.

Making Nobles’ multiple multiple births even more unusual is that her babies were conceived without in vitro fertilization or fertility drugs, said Dr. Vibhaben Thaker, a neonatologist and the director of the neonatal intensive care nursery at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital, where the triplets were born.

The family has no history of multiple births, either, Nobles said.

The triplets — Vincent, Santino and Andres — were born prematurely. They were in the neonatal intensive care nursery at Good Samaritan for three weeks and home with their siblings three weeks before their actual due date, noted Thaker.

The family is prepared, Nobles said. Her family and her partner’s family both live nearby and are volunteering to help. She has plenty of clothes the triplets can wear — and a closet full of diapers for the newborns.

She does hope those diapers last longer than a week, she said, laughing.