Mom of 7 ‘Couldn’t Believe’ She Was Pregnant with Ultra-Rare Quadruplets, 3 of Whom Are Identical

A Texas couple has done something doctors say is extraordinarily rare: they conceived quadruplets naturally, without fertility treatments.

In July, April Martinez and her husband, Shawnpail Fields, both 25, welcomed four babies — sons Artemis, Curtis and Denahi, and daughter Eudora — in a multiple birth first reported by the Austin American-Statesman. The newborns join three older siblings, making the Martinez-Fields household a family of nine.

“It hasn’t sunk in at all,” Martinez, of Jarrell, Texas, says of the life-changing arrival. “I don’t feel like it’s ever going to, because I still don’t believe it.”

“To me, I don’t feel we did anything crazy,” she adds. “This is what our life is.”

Martinez found out she was pregnant on Jan. 20. She had recently started working as a corrections officer and planned to wait until her insurance kicked in before seeing her OB/GYN.

But after experiencing pain at work, she went to the ER alone, where an ultrasound revealed far more than she expected.

“One of the nurses that had come in was kind of joking, ‘What would you do if you’re having more than one?’ ” Martinez recalls. “I was like, Oh, that’d be crazy. She’s like, ‘What would you do if you’re having more than two?’ I was like, ‘Y’all might have to admit me. I think I might lose it.’ ”

The nurse laughed, left the room, then returned with a doctor.

“In my 20 years, I’ve never got to tell anybody this. You’re having quads,” the doctor told her, Martinez says. “I just started crying. I couldn’t believe it.”

When she called Fields from the hospital, he tried to guess the news.

“He was like, ‘We’re having twins?’ I was like, ‘Nope. More than that.’ He was like, ‘Triplets? No, stop playing.’ … He was like, ‘Four?’ He couldn’t believe it.”

Dr. Jasbir Singh, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at St. David’s North Austin Medical Center in Austin, Texas, oversaw Martinez’s care after that first ultrasound. He described the pregnancy as highly unusual because it happened without fertility treatments.

He estimated the odds of naturally conceived quadruplets at somewhere between 1 in 700,000 and 1 in a million.

“We see twins and triplets rather frequently these days, given infertility treatments,” he said. “But hers was a spontaneous quadruplet pregnancy, which is extraordinarily unique and rare and made it very special. And even more so was that there were three identical babies, which is just remarkable.”

In Martinez’s case, she carried four babies but had two placentas — meaning three of the babies shared one placenta.

“The placenta is basically the lung-heart machine, or the roots of the tree, that provide nutrients to the tree,” Singh explained. “So three babies were sharing one root system.”

Given the risks that come with quadruplet pregnancies, Singh advised Martinez to start bed rest around 26 weeks, with delivery expected around 30 weeks.

“Quadruplets are very complicated,” he said, noting that multiple pregnancies have high rates of premature delivery and potential complications throughout.

Martinez continued working until she began having contractions and was admitted to St. David’s North Austin Medical Center on June 14.

During her stay, her husband and three older kids visited often — and Fields even brought a PlayStation to help pass the time.

“It took us a while to figure out how to hook it up to the hospital,” Martinez says. “Once we figured it out, me and my dad would play Call of Duty every night. … So crocheting [baby blankets] and Call of Duty were my biggest time consumers.“

On July 13, concerns about Artemis’ umbilical cord nutrient flow sped up the delivery plan.

“He was not getting as much as he should be like the others are,” Martinez says. “We were all on Artemis’ timeline.”

“[Artemis] got really small and really sick,” Singh says, explaining that the team aimed to keep the pregnancy going as long as possible for all four babies — but couldn’t deliver only one and leave the others.

Ultimately, the delivery happened in an operating room large enough for the number of specialists required.

“They say usually when you go in it’s a team for yourself … and then a team for the baby,” Martinez says. “So they had to have four separate teams — one for each baby. It was pretty packed in there.”

The babies were born at:

• Artemis: 2 lbs., 1 oz.
• Denahi: 3 lbs., 1 oz.
• Curtis: 3 lbs., 2 oz.
• Eudora: 2 lbs., 13 oz.

All four were taken to the NICU, and Martinez met them after she recovered.

After Martinez was discharged three days later, she and Fields rotated NICU visits around their work schedules and childcare for their older children.

By late August, Curtis, Denahi and Eudora were home. Artemis stayed longer due to feeding issues, but he was discharged on Nov. 9.

Now, Martinez says, she feels relief with everyone under one roof.

“I felt like I had just been waiting and waiting and waiting. We feel complete now,” she says. “We can resume our new normal life.”

Early in the pregnancy, the couple bought a van to fit their growing crew. They also recently moved into a new house after living in an apartment.

Looking back, Martinez says the pace of day-to-day life doesn’t leave much time to reflect.

“When you’re just doing it, you don’t really have time to think about it because you’re pretty busy,” she says. “But I guess from an outsider’s perspective, that’s pretty crazy.”

The family planned to spend the holidays at Martinez’s sister’s home.

“She’s got the biggest living room, so we’re gonna fill it up,” Martinez says. “It’s gonna be awesome. Artemis did miss Halloween, but that’s nothing crazy. He’s … here for Christmas. I can’t wait.”

Since the quadruplets’ birth, Martinez also had her tubes tied, saying this was her last pregnancy.