A mother who suffered three miscarriages became pregnant with quadruplets just as she was about to give up on having more children.
Dayna Childress, 28, became pregnant with her first child Lincoln in 2015 after less than a month of trying.
When Lincoln was nine months old, Mrs Childress and her husband Colby, 27, decided to try and expand their family.
Seven months later, Mrs Childress discovered she was pregnant, but miscarried at six weeks.
Mrs Childress, of Springboro, Ohio, became pregnant twice more, with both ending in a miscarriage.
Desperate, the stay-at-home mother was prescribed fertility drugs, which she took for another year before she conceived again.
At five weeks, an ultrasound revealed the couple were expecting quadruplets. Otto, Willow, Simon and Willis were born on June 29 after 28 weeks and six days.
‘Colby and I started trying in 2015 and got pregnant immediately,’ Mrs Childress said. ‘The pregnancy was uneventful and very healthy.’
After Lincoln was born, she spent seven months trying to conceive again before a pregnancy test came back positive.
She became concerned when the nausea she endured during her first and second pregnancy abruptly stopped at week five.
‘Water was the main thing that caused me to get nauseous in that pregnancy and with my son, so I noticed the minute it went away and drank lots of water to try to get the nausea back,’ Mrs Childress said.
‘A week after the nausea stopped, tests confirmed I had miscarried. I was devastated and couldn’t accept it.’
Despite her heartbreak at losing her baby, Mrs Childress became pregnant soon after. However, she miscarried again at four weeks.
A specialist later diagnosed Mrs Childress with unexplained recurrent miscarriages.
‘I saw a specialist who redid my blood work and everything was fine,’ she said.
Mrs Childress was prescribed the fertility drugs Clomid and Ovidrel, which both stimulate ovulation.
She took the drugs for a year before she became pregnant again, however, this too ended in a miscarriage.
Mrs Childress continued using fertility drugs for two more of her menstrual cycles when she became pregnant in December last year.
Doctors reportedly warned the couple the drug carries a 30 per cent chance of multiple pregnancies.
‘The first ultrasound showed four sacs, but we could only see two babies with beating hearts, so I thought it would only be twins at the most, so I was delighted about that but even happier about quads,’ Mrs Childress said.
‘The babies were born in June, Simon weighed 3lbs 2oz (1.4kg), then the other three were 2lbs 14oz (1.3kg) each.
Mrs Childress is speaking out to raise awareness of infertility.
‘When people find out what we went through, they’ve opened up about their own troubles,’ she said.
‘You don’t realise how common infertility is because everyone keeps it a secret, it’s like we’re all too ashamed to talk about it, but that was what helped me get through it.’
