Odds of four: "incalculable"
Published on Friday, February 14, 2014
By: Jennifer Hospodor
“There are more feet.”
Those words, spoken by Kim Fugate’s physician during delivery, first alerted her she was having quadruplets.
She and husband, Craig, as well as the entire health-care team working on her case, believed she was having triplets.
The babies, all girls, arrived Feb. 8, just shy of 13 weeks premature. All the babies are doing well in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Winfred L. Wiser Hospital for Women and Infants at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Dr. James Bofill, professor of maternal fetal medicine, said the odds of spontaneous quadruplets are 1 in 729,000. But in the Fugates’ case, the odds are even smaller because their girls split from a single egg, meaning the siblings are identical.
“Those odds are incalculable,” Bofill said.
Those words, spoken by Kim Fugate’s physician during delivery, first alerted her she was having quadruplets.
She and husband, Craig, as well as the entire health-care team working on her case, believed she was having triplets.
The babies, all girls, arrived Feb. 8, just shy of 13 weeks premature. All the babies are doing well in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the Winfred L. Wiser Hospital for Women and Infants at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Dr. James Bofill, professor of maternal fetal medicine, said the odds of spontaneous quadruplets are 1 in 729,000. But in the Fugates’ case, the odds are even smaller because their girls split from a single egg, meaning the siblings are identical.
“Those odds are incalculable,” Bofill said.
