A mum has defied the odds and given birth to her third sets of twins leaving doctors amazed.
Antionette Quigley, 32, just welcomed her her third set of twin babies Millar and Maci, a boy and a girl, three weeks ago.
It comes after already having two sets of twin girls, Morgan and Makayla, 14 and Molly and Madison, 6.
The chances of conceiving twins naturally is estimated to be around one in every 250 pregnancies, reports Belfast Live.
But the odds of having three sets of non-identical twins is one in 88,000 according to TAMBA, the Twins and Multiple Births Association.
Antionette as now lifted the lid on her shock of having three sets of twins in a row.
She said: “It was definitely a shock the first time round, I was only 16 and I think I was laughing and crying, I didn’t know what to do. I remember getting out of the scan and ringing my mummy and telling her it was twins and she thought I was joking.
“Then the next time people were saying I bet it’s going to be twins and of course it was, people were just amazed saying what are the odds of that happening?
“Then this time round I went for an early scan because I had back pain and they found the two sacs but we thought maybe it was a wee bit too early, then we went back two weeks later for a checkup and there was three, there wasn’t three to begin with but then that didn’t progress too well, so sadly we lost that wee one.”
While the intricacies of why Antoinette from Killyleagh conceived three sets of twins is still not fully known, doctors have said it’s likely due to something known as hyper-ovulating, meaning she releases more than one egg per cycle.
Having never had just one child, the mum-of-six says she simply gets ‘on with it’, managing a busy household of teenagers, six-year-olds and two newborns.
She added: “I think I’ve coped quite well over the years, I’ve never known any different as I never just had one child on its own so we’ve managed. You just have to get on with it no matter what the situation.
"My house might be a mess and my house might not be the best house but things like that don't matter. I’ve really noticed that over the years, I used to crack up when the house was a mess, now I just think, it will get done eventually and what doesn’t get done today will have to wait.
According to the NHS, non-identical (dizygotic) twins happen when two separate eggs are fertilised and then implant into the woman's womb. Identical (monozygotic) twins happen when a single egg (zygote) is fertilised.
The egg then divides in two, creating identical twins who share the same genes.
In 2016, around 12,000 sets of twins and about 190 sets of triplets or more were born in the UK. That means about one in every 65 births in the UK today are twins, triplets or more.
