Two bodies, three babies: Incredibly rare identical triplets born in Texas

A rare set of identical triplets were born in Texas on Saturday. Daily Mail reports.

Silvia Hernandez and Raul Torres welcomed babies Catalina, Ximena and Scarlett a few days earlier than they had expected and just minutes apart at Corpus Christi Medical Center, with each girl weighing the exactly 4lbs 11ozs.

That was not the only surprise either, as Ximena and Scarlett are conjoined at the pelvis.

'We’re good,' Torres told ABC News as his wife recovered from her cesarean section.

'The two babies are going into surgery right now. They're going to check their liquids to see that nothing's blocked up.'

While triplets have become more common with the rise of methods such as in vitro fertilization, having an identical trio naturally, where one egg is fertilized and splits into three separate embyros, is rare.

One in a million is commonly reported as the odds of having natural identical triplets, and only one in six triplet pregnancies result in three babies of the same sex.

Conjoined twins meanwhile occur once every 200,000 live births, and of those only about 35% survive beyond the first day.
This means the odds of having naturally conceived, identical female triplets with two of the babies being conjoined is around one in 50million.

Because the conjoined babies are so small however, they will have to wait six months to a year before they can have the necessary surgery to be separated.

It has been a difficult pregnancy for the couple, more so when they learned that not only were they expecting triplets, but that two of the babies were conjoined.

Torres was forced to leave his job to care for his wife and their three-year-old son Raul Jr. in the final weeks, and now the family is hoping to raise money to help with their medical bills.

'The truth is I cried, not because of how the babies would look because we knew we would do our best to give them the best and most productive life posible [sic], I cried because the doctor said we had to understand and accept the fact that once they were born they could die,' wrote Hernandez on Facebook as she documented their journey.

Hernandez had to spend the past few months in the hospital for the sake of the babies, who were born just short of 34 weeks, but all three seem to be perfectly healthy at this time.

'It's like a gift of God,' said Raul in an interview with KIII.

'God chose us for a reason, to take care of them. He sent us little angels for a reason, so it's a big blessing for us.'

The family has set up a GoFundMe page to help with the babies' medical bills.