Articles labeled: identical triplets

Wow, given the gazillions of babies that have been born in the United States, to be able to say that your birth is only one of 100 documented cases is pretty significant.

A 32-year-old mother from Belcamp gave birth in January to quadruplets — and three of the four boys are identical. The parents and the boys plan to introduce themselves at a news conference Friday.

The boys were born 11 weeks premature at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson.

Hospital officials said there are fewer than 100 documented cases of “identical triplets plus one” in the United States.

Even without the extra baby, identical triplets are rare, although how rare is difficult to say. Multiple births, however, are more common since the advent of fertility drugs and in vitro fertilization, which was used to conceive the triplets born at GBMC.

Triplet births are fairly rare as it is, but one circumstance only happens — according to one pediatrician — once every 200 million births: identical triplets. Normally triplets are fraternal (3 eggs involved), or a mix of identical and fraternal (one egg that splits plus another egg).

MANHASSET, N.Y. (AP) — When they get older, Logan, Eli and Collin Penn may blanch at the notion they wore nail polish to their first news conference. But it’s the only way their parents know how to tell the boys apart right now.

The identical triplets were born Wednesday at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island — an event so rare that an obstetrician estimated it might happen just once in 200 million births.

Other research says it happens once in every 60,000 births — wow, some real accurate number reporting going on there, guys.