When Your Best Friend Gives Birth to Your Babies—All 4 of Them

Debbie: They almost canceled the second procedure because the embryos were so misshapen and bad quality. But we went for it.

Stacey: Of the 10 eggs they fertilized, there were none, according to the embryologist, that were excellent or good condition. So they said chances of conceiving are reduced greatly.

Then one of my doctor’s nurses came out and she said, “Listen, they told me the exact same thing with my embryos, and I have twin boys. So don’t let that drive your decision.”

Beck: So they implanted 10 and then four worked out?

Stacey: Correct.

Beck: That’s a good success rate.

Stacey: It was kind of scary. I remember the day we found out she was pregnant—of course we were together. We were at a gas station, and they called and told us she was pregnant. They also told us that her [hormone] levels were really high, so they were fairly confident that there were multiple. Then we went for the ultrasound and saw the four heartbeats.

Debbie: Seems like yesterday, huh, Stace?

Stacey: It really does.

Beck: How did Debbie’s pregnancy go? How did your friendship evolve during it?

Stacey: When she was on bed rest, I would go over to her house every day and take care of her. She had to have shots on the daily of progesterone to help build up the lining of her uterus to maintain the pregnancy.

Debbie: Yeah, every 12 hours.

Beck: Stacey, did you give her the shots?

Stacey: I did. Yes.

Debbie: She would come over when my husband would go to work and stay with me all day because my kids were little when I was on bed rest. She took care of us.

Stacey: She did have a stint where she was hospitalized. She had started to go into preterm labor. And everybody said, Once a quad mom goes in the hospital, she’s never coming out until she delivers. It ended up that she was anemic. My kids were sucking up all her blood. So she ended up having a blood transfusion and amazingly after that, she was able to come home.

Debbie: Stacey, tell her about the water thing.

Stacey: The hydrotherapy. [While she was in the hospital], she loved going in—it felt good for her to be in water and float and not have the weight of the belly. But it was so humiliating for her, poor thing, because they put her in this harness, which felt like lifting up a cow.

Debbie: It was a tank like you’d put an animal in, honestly.

Stacey: When she got to come home, she would come over and get in our pool.

Beck: Tell me about the delivery—who was in the room? And what was it like to see your best friend give birth to your babies?

Stacey: It started around midnight. I was up and in the bathroom with a horrible stomachache—just having a feeling that something was going on. I don’t know if my body knew something was coming or what, but Debbie called me and said her water broke. We got dressed, rushed over, picked her up, and ran off to the hospital.