Ivanna Cardenas and her husband David were an ordinary couple who found out about the pregnancy and had an ultrasound scan. When the doctor said the couple were expecting four children, their happiness was overwhelming. But soon the mother-to-be was faced with a difficult choice: “Save one or let them all die”. It was the hardest decision they had ever had to make.
“I remember the moment when the doctor said at the ultrasound that we were having twins. Then he paused and corrected that there were three babies. After a minute he looked at us with round eyes and said that I had four babies growing in my belly. This news discouraged us. At first we thought he was joking, but then we realised the doctor was serious,” recalls Ivanna.
It turns out that a natural quadruple pregnancy is quite rare in medicine, occurring only in one case out of 700,000. It is clear that a woman’s body is already under stress during pregnancy, and when there are four children, there are additional risks to the health of the mother-to-be and her children.
Pregnancy was going on as usual and nothing seemed to be going wrong. At 27 weeks, the couple came in for a routine check-up and ultrasound. The experts said that one baby was dying because it was not getting enough oxygen. The parents were faced with a difficult choice. They were offered to wait for a natural birth, but then the baby would not live to see it and would die in the womb, or to have an emergency caesarean section.
“These were terrible words that I could not get out of my head for a long time. How can you let one die or risk the lives of three? The difficulty was that the doctors demanded an answer immediately, explaining that it was impossible to delay, ”shared the expectant mother of quadruplets.
The doctor explained that the chances of the babies surviving after birth would be only 40%. And if one waits until the natural term, only three will be born. However, even here he gave no guarantees. The couple then made the hardest decision of their lives. They decided on an emergency delivery. After a caesarean section, the babies were immediately admitted to the intensive care unit for premature babies.
The boy who risked the most due to the fact that he received less oxygen was named Gabriel by his parents. His birth weight was only 539 grams. The fight for his life was the most difficult. The parents were prepared for the fact that the son would not survive. Gabriel is on the mend. He had to stay in the intensive care unit for 140 days until he was fully recovered and gained the necessary weight.
The baby has turned out to be a real fighter and is now living a full life together with his brothers Julian and Sebastian and sister Francesca. The parents of the four little ones recently celebrated their next birthday. They are living and enjoying life, trying to forget the nightmare they have been through.
