Mum went for baby no. 3 – and got quintuplets: “I was so shocked”

A couple with two boys decided to go for a third child, with the hope of having a little girl. Well, they got their girl – or rather, four of them, as they had quintuplets!

Megan and Joshua Hulen from Minot, North Dakota, already had sons Jacob, 7, and Matthew, 2, but decided to try for a girl.

As Megan has polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), she doesn’t ovulate regularly, so had used fertility drugs and IUI to fall pregnant in the past.

So imagine her and Joshua’s surprise when they discovered she was naturally pregnant without even getting around to IUI. “I started to feel really weird and I thought, surely there’s no way I could be pregnant because I never actually ovulated on my own,” Megan reported in an interview with The Sun. “But the one time I did, we found out we were pregnant, and that was a surprise enough in itself.”

How many heartbeats?

Of course, that wasn’t the end of the story. “We found out that we were having five babies, and nothing could have prepared us for that,” she said.

“I was so shocked – the ultrasound technician worried they were hurting me because I was shaking. I said ‘I’m shaking because you’ve told me I’m having five babies!’”

Megan was so thrown by the news that she needed to be alone to process it. “After the ultrasound I told my husband I couldn’t go home because I needed time to freak out away from the kids,” she reported. “So we went to his office and I sat in the corner and cried for about an hour.”

Megan had learnt to remain calm in times of stress after the birth of her second son, who was born with Nager syndrome and had spent three months in the NICU. Even so, this pregnancy was very different form her previous two. “There were a lot of differences from being pregnant with one and with five. I couldn’t vacuum the carpet without needing to take a break,” she said. “Standing in front of the mirror to put my makeup on I would become too winded or too tired from holding the weight up and would need to sit down.”

Speedy births

When the doctors noticed a jump in Megan’s blood pressure at 32 weeks, she was admitted to hospital. She then gave birth to her five babies via c-section: Allison, Adam, Madison, Emma and Chloe. But after all the hard work of carrying her brood, Megan couldn’t believe how quickly and easily the birth unfolded. “The birth was not what I expected it to be,” she said. “I was so shocked because the babies were all born within four minutes of each other. It was boom boom boom and all the babies were out.”

In fact, it took longer to stitch Megan up than it did to for her to birth five babies.

Amazing recovery

What was even more surprising was Megan’s speedy recovery. She was discharged within three days of the birth and only needed pain medication for about a week and half. The babies also had no issues, but as they were born early at 32 weeks, they stayed in NICU for three weeks. “The doctors were just as surprised as we were,” Megan said.

Once the babies were delivered, however, the extra workload soon become apparent. She and Joshua had little rest in the first three days, as the feeds were taking up to three hours. And laundry became a full time job of its own. “I had anticipated and prepared for the amount of laundry I would be doing, but it’s even more so than I expected,” said Megan.

But at the end of the day, the couple could not be happier to be back home, despite their sudden surprise family of six kids. “Life with the quints is chaotic but it’s a good chaos,” said Megan. “We’re just so happy to have everybody under the same roof.”