The surprise when the couple from Cheshire in England found out at their 13-week scan that they were expecting not one, not two, but three – triplets!
While having a triplet itself is rather uncommon, the British couple were then left bemused when they were told of a very rare occurrence where the triplets shared the same placenta. As such, it makes Gina and Craig Dewdney’s triplets, Jimmy, Jensen, and Jaxson, quite literally 1 in 200 million.
Up until their 13-week scan, 34-year-old Gina confessed that she’d suspected she was carrying twins.
“Although there are triplets in my family, generations back, I didn’t consider it would happen to me,” Gina said. “I was so shocked. We both couldn’t believe it when three heads suddenly appeared on the scan!”
After discovering she was in fact carrying triplets, Gina and her husband Craig, were even more shocked when the doctor explained that their three babies were sharing a single placenta – a rarity with a just 1 in 200 million chance of occurring.
“My journey was a complete rollercoaster,” she said. “I went from having lots of early pregnancy symptoms, such as migraines, insomnia, and extreme exhaustion, to very quickly becoming very big. It got to the point where I found it very difficult to walk.”
The doctors had planned for Gina to have a c-section, but since her waters broke at 31 weeks, Gina started to have contractions and thus was rushed for an emergency c-section at Liverpool Women’s Hospital on April 26.
At 3.52 at night, Jimmy, Jensen, and Jaxson were all safely delivered in one minute 52 seconds. Incredibly, Jaxson was born encased in the amniotic sac. Since only 1 in 80,000 babies is born that way, this incredible rarity signifies good luck and led Jaxson to be hailed as a water baby.
Since the triplets were born premature, Gina and Craig had only a few first tender interactions in the delivery room before the babies were brought to the neonatal intensive care unit, where they were placed in an incubator. They spent six weeks there but have since come home and are going for frequent checkups.
Now six months old, the boys are doing well. Jensen and Jaxson have had successful hernia operations, and Jimmy is still on the waiting list.
Once she brought them home, Gina discovered the challenges of being a new mom with many sleepless nights, breastfeeding, and having to share herself between the three babies.
Despite the troubles, Gina wouldn’t change it for the world as she enjoys watching her baby boys grow and develop individual personalities.
“What is interesting is they are all identical and DNA is the same, but they’ve got such different personalities already,” she said. “Jimmy is the joker, he is always laughing,” she described. “Jensen is the dramatic one! He is also very chatty. And Jaxson is the chilled one; I call him my ‘yogi baby.’”
“I have seen them come so far,” said Gina, “from being in the NICU in incubators and tube-fed to now smiling and laughing. It’s an incredibly rewarding journey.”
