Quadruple surprise: Mother pregnant with two sets of identical twins

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Monday, December 29, 2014
Ashley Gardner
Ashley Gardner reacts to the news that she's pregnant with an extremely rare double set of identical twins.
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A husband and wife in Utah just found out they're about to be parents of quadruplets.

Even more rare, the babies are two sets of identical twins.

Ashley and Tyson Gardner told CNN they've tried unsuccessfully for eight years to get pregnant. Running out of options, the couple decided to give in-vitro fertilization a try.

Her chances of getting pregnant with just a single child was only 40 percent. But when Ashley went in for her first ultrasound, she was given the big news.

She was pregnant with a rare set of identical twins, times two. The parents were about to have one of the world's more rare set of quadruplets.

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Doctors estimate twins only occur in about 1 percent of IVF cycles. Only 2 percent of all pregnancies result in one set of identical twins, medical researchers at the University of Pennsylvania report. And out of those, just 30 percent are identical twins. Doctors put the odds of having two sets of identical twins from different placentas at one in 70 million.

But even though its extremely rare, it isn't the first time we've seen two sets of identical twins.

Just last year, Tressa and Manuel Montalvo of Houston, Texas gave birth to four boys -- two sets of identical twins -- at The Woman's Hospital of Texas (read more here). And in 2011, Miranda and Josh Crawford became parents of identical boys and identical girls in Charlotte, North Carolina (read more here).

As for the Gardners, they've been sharing updates--like the fact that all four babies will be girls -- on their Facebook page. The page has quadrupled in the number of likes, now at nearly 40,000. The couple tells their new fans they feel blessed by all the love and support they are getting.