'One in a Million' Identical Triplets Close to Returning Home
— -- One-month-old identical triplets so rare they were dubbed “one in a million” by the Montana doctor who delivered them are schedule to go home from the hospital on Tuesday.
Cade, Ian and Milo Kinsey were born at Billings Clinic in Billings, Montana, on Dec. 5, just before their mom, Jody Kinsey, reached the 32-week mark of her pregnancy.
Cade, the triplet delivered first who weighed in at 3 pounds, 13 ounces, was the first to be released from the hospital. Now the family is expecting that Ian -- born second at 3 pounds, 11 ounces -- and Milo born third at 4 pounds, 1 ounce -- will be released from the hospital on Tuesday.
“We will all be able to go home,” Kinsey, 29, told ABC News.
Kinsey, who with her husband, Jase, has an older son, age 6, has been in Billings -- a two-hour commute from the family’s home in Miles City, Montana -- since November, when she experienced early signs of labor and her doctor advised her to stay at the hospital in case she went into labor and was stranded due to winter weather.
The extended hospital stay wasn't the first time in this pregnancy that the high school sweethearts -- who conceived the triplets naturally, with no IVF -- were surprised.
“I went in for an early ultrasound just to make sure that everything was looking good and the ultrasound tech told me she wasn't positive but it looked like there were three heartbeats,” Kinsey said. “I went by myself to that appointment and called Jase and asked if he was sitting down.”
“When she called, I said, ‘Why are we having twins?,’ because my dad is a twin,” Jase Kinsey recalled. “She said, ‘No, we’re having triplets,’ and I said, ‘I’ll sit down now.’”
“I called her back 20 minutes later and said, ‘This isn't a joke right?,’ and she said, ‘No, this is for real,’” Jase recalled.
Just before her delivery, Kinsey gave her husband a heads up that the delivery would be happening sometime soon, but that she felt fine and there was no rush.
When Jase and his mother-in-law left the next day for Billings, they got worried when, 15 miles away from Billings, they sent Kinsey a text and got no reply.
“When we got into Billings I called and the first thing she said was, ‘You missed their birthday,’” Jase said.
Thanks to the photography skills of a nurse who snapped photos of their birth, Jase got to see his sons enter the world through a C-section, all reportedly “bawling” when they came out.
“When you have three different babies crying at once, it makes a very unique melody,” the delivering physician, Dr. Dana Damron, told The Billings Gazette.
The Kinseys say their three sons are easy to tell apart, for now, by their differing sizes and already different emerging personalities.
“Ian is always really smiley. Cade is really loud,” Jase said.
Once the brothers catch up to each other in size, Kinsey imagines having to come up with a system of “bracelets or something to tell them apart.”
At home in Miles City to help with that system will be Jax, the once “skeptical” older brother who has been won over by his younger brothers’ charms.
“At first he was a little skeptical because, right away, he could tell that his world had changed majorly,” Kinsey said. “But now he wants to hold them and he’s pretty excited.”
The additional good news for the family is that all three boys, after being kept in the hospital for standard precautions as premature babies, are healthy.
"We’d like to thank the Billings Hospital and Dr. Damron and the NICU nurses who have been absolutely amazing," Jase said.
