Australian mother delivers naturally conceived identical quadruplet girls

A 34-year-old Australian woman delivered four identical quadruplet girls at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital on July 14. The babies, named Emily, Harriet, Catherine and Alexa, were born by Caesarean section at 28 weeks and four days after a high-risk pregnancy that required monitoring from 25 weeks.

The quadruplets resulted from a single fertilized egg that split into four embryos, a phenomenon medical experts say occurs in roughly one out of every 15 million pregnancies. Hospital maternal-fetal specialist Dr. Alexa Bendall noted that such a case had not been recorded in Australia before.

All four infants are in a neonatal intensive-care unit and are reported to be “really well,” according to Dr. Bendall, who added that the mother is also healthy.

Professor Shireen Meher of the University of Sydney, who was not involved in the case, said naturally conceived identical quadruplets are extremely rare and that data from such cases are valuable for improving future care. She observed that quadruplet pregnancies are more common with assisted reproductive technologies.

The family, which already has four children aged one to ten, expressed gratitude for the outcome, describing the experience as a “miracle.”