Texas couple welcomes rare identical triplets
HOUSTON -- Parents of a rare set of identical triplets are welcoming the babies home, a month after the three little girls were born at a Houston hospital, CBS affiliate KHOU reports.
The triplets are named Addison, Savannah and Kinsley and their parents are still a bit overwhelmed.
"Just triple of everything," said Stephanie Harris, the children's mom. "They sit there. They make the same noises. They do the same thing. They have their own language."
"We are prepared," new dad Brad Harris said. "I'm just way outnumbered now."
During an early ultrasound, the doctor initially said they were expecting twins.
"And they were in the same placenta, and so she automatically knew that they were going to be identical," Stephanie Harris said.
A few weeks later, she came back for a follow-up ultrasound. That's when the doctor delivered the unexpected news, telling Stephanie she was having triplets.
Stephanie's mother Lynn Sweatt was with her during that appointment.
"And when she said that there was a third, her arm went over her head and I'm saying, 'It will be OK. It will be OK,'" Sweatt said.
The girls were born on Dec. 1, 2015, 10 weeks premature, weighing about three pounds each. Their parents have come up with a color-coded system to help tell them apart.
"We got ankle bracelets, and we're going to color coordinate them," Stephanie Harris said. "Hopefully, we don't get them mixed up."
While identical triplets are extremely rare -- doctors say about one in a million births -- these girls do have some company. At least four other sets of identical triplets were born in the U.S. last year, in Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, and Montana.