“There’s no way to explain it other than a miracle.”
At 46, woman gives birth to identical triplets: ‘1 in 20 billion odds’
When Audrey Tiberius was 41, she was told by fertility specialists that her chances of conceiving a child with in vitro fertilization (IVF) were just 10%.
“They said, ‘I’m sorry, your eggs are too old,’” the Utah mom
“We did three rounds of in vitro and they all failed.”
Then, at 46, Tiberius got pregnant naturally. She and her husband, Tyler Tiberius, 41, welcomed identical triplet boys on March 30.
Sky, River and Bay joined big brothers Marcus, 13, James, 11, Christian, 9, and Max, 7.
“Most experts put the odds of identical triplets at one in 200 million births,” Tiberius said. “I talked to a statistician and apparently the odds of a 45 year old having identical triplets are one in 20 billion.”
It’s quite rare to become pregnant without medical intervention at 45, according to Dr. Lisa Thiel, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Spectrum Health West Michigan.
“We have millions and millions of eggs when we’re born and then they die off over time. As we start to get into our mid-thirties we have less eggs that are appropriate for reproduction and getting pregnant is harder to achieve,”
. “By the time we’re 41, the risk of having chromosomal abnormalities is also much higher.”
Thiel added that there is a very high-risk of miscarriage in the first trimester because the uterine lining isn’t as healthy.
“I didn’t realize that older celebrities often use frozen eggs or donor eggs,” she shared.
“Doctors need to talk to women about fertility and what their options are to save them heartache.”
Tiberius described her triplets as “miracles.”
Tiberius said she was naive when it came to her fertility. She assumed that because her paternal grandmother had babies in her 40s, that she would be able to do the same.
“This was so statistically unlikely that there’s no way to explain it other than a miracle,” she said.
