Mercedes and Jonathan Sandhu went from a family of four to a family of eight this year.
Last year, Mercedes found out she was pregnant, and at her first ultrasound visit she was told something that she never thought she would hear.
“The ultrasound technician just looked at me and she said, ‘All right ... here’s what I see. I see one, two, three or four little babies for beating heart.’ I was in shock,” Mercedes said.
At that moment, Mercedes knew she needed to call Jonathan.
“I told Jonathan he did not have to go to that first ultrasound because I thought, ‘Oh, you can come to the next one. We’ll have plenty,’” Mercedes said.
“So I got the call, and if you’ve ever had someone say you’re expecting quadruplets. It is something you’re trying to understand what they’re actually saying,” Jonathan said.
The interesting thing about the Sandhu’s pregnancy is all the girls are considered to be spontaneous identical quadruplets.
“They had shared a single placenta, so, they’re identical and they were natural,” said Dr. Nathan Sundgren, Associate Professor of Pediatrics in Neonatology at Texas Children’s Hospital.
According to Raising Multiples, an organization focused on providing health information on multiple births, the odds of having spontaneous quadruplets is 1 in 571,787 pregnancies. The difference between the Sandhu girls are they are identical, which is not a common sight.
“It depends on what you read. You’ll see some things that say it’s a 1 in 15,000,000. That works until you read that there’s also somewhere between 72 and 76 cases on document history ever,” Jonathan said.
The Sandhu’s needed to plan. At home, they already had two little boys. Luke, who is four, and Aaron, who is almost two. Within five years of their marriage, they went from just the two of them, to a family of eight.
Mercedes’ pregnancy was considered high risk. Her first two pregnancies are what you considered normal. She went full term with both her boys, and they were home shortly after birth. With the quadruplets, the chances of them being born premature were really high and so were the chances of complications during birth.
“It’s such a bizarre scenario because some can make it, and others don’t. I mean, no parents ever wants to experience that. It’s getting the home ready for newborns while having to plan a funeral for one or more,” Jonathan said.
The quads were safely born at 29 weeks. Due to them being born before the typical 40-week gestational period, they were considered premature and had to immediately go to NICU.
“Any babies born that needs intensive care comes into our neonatal intensive care unit, what we call the NICU,” Sundgren said.
Getting to 29 weeks was huge for the Sandhu’s. The survival rate at that time period is 95%.
“We expect them to survive. We really want to focus on making sure they survive and don’t have long-term complications,” Sundgren said.
The biggest concerns are the lungs not being fully developed and helping the girls breathe until they can do so on their own.
The quadruplets were born on May 1, 2024, and have the names, Hannah Grace, Lucy Marie, Rebecca Claire and Petra Ann. All four were born via C-section.
Over the next few months, the quads would be closely monitored to make sure they were growing properly so they could eventually leave the hospital and go home.
“When they get closer to that 38, 39, 40 mark, which are term dates that babies are born, that’s when we start expecting they’ll be ready to go home,” Sundgren said.
By July 24, 2024, all four girls were home, together with each other, their parents and brothers.
Mercedes and Jonathan praise the staff at Texas Children’s Hospital, saying this was a tough experience but they helped make it rewarding and easy.
“The nurses were like, ‘We can work around you, do what you need for your girls,” Jonathan said.
The Sandhu’s also thank their families and friends. Mercedes, originally from San Antonio, had her mother and sisters step in a lot to help with her boys while her and Jonathan were at the hospital with the girls.
“They helped us in ways we couldn’t imagine,” Mercedes said.
Luke and Aaron also helped their parents in ways they didn’t know.
“It would have been so much harder to leave the NICU if we didn’t have the boys. They gave me a sense of normalcy,” Mercedes said.
Now the girls are home and they’re typical newborns who go to their standard first-year appointments.
To help spread the word on spontaneous identical quadruplets, the Sandhu’s created an Instagram page. The page begins with the day the quadruplets were born and gives consistent updates on the family’s life. The Sandhu’s say it also helped them find other people in a similar situation they were in.
“Hearing all the stories about babies growing up and leading normal, healthy lives was just really nice,” Jonathan said.
The Sandhu’s advice to anyone getting ready to give birth, no matter how many babies it is, is to break down it step so you don’t get overwhelmed. They also advise to find support and lean on your family and friends.