AMAZING: Mother conceives identical quadruplets despite IUD

When mom Adriana Luna from Texas realized she was pregnant again, she had no idea what she had been blessed with: four identical babies, conceived while using an IUD.

Key Takeaways:

• Adriana Luna had just begun to attend college with the goal of obtaining a nursing degree, and had an IUD implanted to prevent pregnancy.

• She conceived despite the IUD, becoming pregnant with four identical girls.

• She and her fiancé referred to the babies as blessings.

The Details:

Against the odds, and notwithstanding the fact that she had an intrauterine device (IUD) implanted, Luna conceived a rare set of quadruplets — four identical daughters — named Amora, Analia, Arya, and A’zura. "Four blessings,” she and her husband called them.

Luna explained that she had an IUD in place when she and her partner conceived their quadruplets. Naturally, they were shocked.

“What started as the news of one baby quickly became two, and then, unbelievably, four,” the parents wrote on their GoFundMe page. 

Luna said her fiancee, Anthony Lerma , who is a twin himself, “thought I was joking” when she divulged her pregnancy to him. “Multiples do not run in my family, so this was something new,” she said. “And at the same time, I was excited, but also worried.”

Luna, who shares a two-year-old son with Lerma, said she hadn’t anticipated becoming pregnant again. She had only recently started her nursing studies at Del Mar College when she found she was expecting.

Corpus Christi family welcomes rare identical quadruplet baby girls

Zoom In:

Although pregnancy with an IUD is extremely uncommon, it can occur, and as noted by Yale Medicine, conceiving while an IUD is in place comes with heightened health risks. As reported by VeryWell Health:

The failure rate for hormonal IUDs is very low, between 0.02% to 0.04%, equating to one or two pregnancies per 5,000 users. Copper IUDs have a slightly higher failure rate of 0.8%, resulting in about 40 pregnancies per 5,000 users.

Conceiving with an IUD in place increases the risk of ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, preterm delivery, and more.

Yet Luna delivered her quadruplets safely at Corpus Christi Medical Center at 29 weeks pregnant. After their birth, all four babies were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Two of the newborns have already been discharged, and the family is waiting for the day the remaining two can return home. 

To care for her babies, Luna has stepped away from the nursing program she had begun, at least for the time being.

“I was actually one and done with my toddler,” she said, "but they just came and they're a miracle because they weren't supposed to be here at all.”

The couple wrote on GoFundMe:

“While we are beyond grateful for these four blessings, this has also brought sudden emotional, physical, and financial challenges. Caring for quadruplets means quadrupling the diapers, formula, medical care, and daily essentials—on top of adjusting to life as new parents of four newborns at once."

Zoom Out:

MSN noted that multiple births are far more common in pregnancies conceived through artificial fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization, where the chances can reach up to 30%. Meanwhile, naturally occurring, or “spontaneous,” multiple pregnancies are much less frequent. Twins happen in only about 3% of natural pregnancies, and the odds of conceiving more than two babies without medical intervention are extraordinarily tiny.  

Raising Multiples, a non-profit that supports families with multiple births,  declared that the probability of a spontaneous quadruplet pregnancy is roughly 1 in 572,000. The odds that all four would be identical are even rarer — about 1 in 15.6 million. Having a parent who is part of a multiple birth can increase the likelihood by a little.

The odds of conceiving identical quadruplets while an IUD is in place is so rare, it likely cannot be calculated.

The Bottom Line: 

Luna’s unexpected and astonishing pregnancy is a testament to how life is miraculous and can surpass all obstacles.