Collier, who got the sʜᴏᴄᴋ of her life when ᴅᴏᴄᴛᴏʀs discovered she was in fact expecting FOUR at nine week scan. The ᴅᴏᴄᴛᴏʀs told the couple that their babies had all been ғᴇʀᴛɪʟɪsᴇᴅ from sᴇᴘᴀʀᴀᴛᴇ ᴇɢɢs too, making them incredibly ʀᴀʀᴇ. They each had their own ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇɴᴛᴀ and own ᴀᴍɴɪᴏᴛɪᴄ sᴀᴄ too. The chances of it happening were a staggering 15 million to one.
Madison Collier , 33, from Georgia and husband Justin had been ᴅᴇsᴘᴇʀᴀᴛᴇ to give their daughter Isla, four, a sibling. They had started trying for one more baby, to give them a family of four. She said:” I’d gone on my own to the scan, so Justin wasn’t even there . I was told I was pregnant with not one baby, but four, and I was so sʜᴏᴄᴋed I thought I was going to ғᴀɪɴᴛ. The nurse kept fanning me with cool air, but the room was spinning, I couldn’t take it in. I hadn’t been expecting anything, so I hadn’t asked Justin to come with me. The sonographer ran the scanner back and forward over my stomach and kept staring at the screen. I started to panic and kept asking if everything was ok, but she didn’t look at me or smile, she kept staring at the screen.”
Collier added:” Then she turned to me and asked if I had been taking ғᴇʀᴛɪʟɪᴛʏ ᴅʀᴜɢs. I told her that I hadn’t, and that it had only taken us a few months of trying for me to fall pregnant. I thought it may be twins, and I asked her in a panic if it was. She said there wasn’t…and then turned to me and said that there were four babies in there. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I thought she was joking, and told her that it wasn’t funny. But then she turned the screen around and showed me. There they were, four tiny little flickering heartbeats on the screen. There were definitely four babies in there without a doubt. They told me that I should call Justin, and hands shaking I dialled his number. He answered, and I was crying so hard that he could barely make out what I was saying. He was so sʜᴏᴄᴋed that he felt sick and ғᴀɪɴᴛ and had to lie down.
We didn’t have any multiples in either of our families. Our families didn’t believe us at first either. When we got home from the hospital we broke the news to our parents. Justin had to send his mum a photo of the scan to show her that he wasn’t joking, and that it was true. We really were pregnant with four babies.” The quadruplets arrived into the world in September last year, Calloway weighing 2Ib5, Wilder at 2Ib9, and Iris and Eliza at 2Ib10.
Collier said: ” Isla was thrilled to meet her brothers and sisters. Instead of getting just one sibling, she had two sisters and two brothers to play with. She was over the moon. She had been so excited when we had told her that I was pregnant with four babies. She was always cuddling my bump and telling me how much she couldn’t wait to meet them all. They all did so well in hospital – which we couldn’t believe as they were all so incredibly tiny when they were born. We saw them in their incubators looking so small and it seemed unbelievable that they had actually been born safely. It was amazing when we finally got to bring them all home in November.”
Raising four babies is no easy feat. It was like riding a wild rollercoaster. She said:” We have had to turn our living room into a nursery, and we’ve been gifted a van too to be able to ferry them all around in. Life is just one big round of feeding, changing and sleeping. Our lives have been turned upside down, to suddenly be a family of seven. It’s hard work. They sleep all the way through the night now, but when they nap in the daytime I do the laundry, clean all the bottles, make up the formula milk, clean the house and play with Isla. So I don’t have much time for sitting down. And it’s chaotic as when one baby cries, it usually sets the other four off. It’s exhausting but I absolutely love being a mum of five. That wasn’t what we had planned for at all. But we wouldn’t change it for the world. They really are our little miracles.”
