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Family celebrating one-month birthdays of identical triplets

Michael and Lauren Whiteley, from left, check on their identical triplets Timothy, Alexander and Nicholas at their home in St. Clair Shores, Mich., Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015. The brothers were born at 34 weeks via C-section on Jan. 25. About 4,300 triplet births are recorded each year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But these births are rarer because the triplets were conceived naturally, without fertility drugs. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Michael and Lauren Whiteley, from left, check on their identical triplets Timothy, Alexander and Nicholas at their home in St. Clair Shores, Mich., Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2015. The brothers were born at 34 weeks via C-section on Jan. 25. About 4,300 triplet births are recorded each year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But these births are rarer because the triplets were conceived naturally, without fertility drugs. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

By Associated Press 1 min read

ST. CLAIR SHORES, Mich. (AP) – A suburban Detroit couple who have two older children are adjusting to life after becoming parents to identical triplets – a multiple birth a doctor calls rare.

The Whiteley family of St. Clair Shores is celebrating the one-month birthdays Wednesday for Alexander, Nicholas and Timothy.

Lauren Whiteley, who wasn’t taking fertility treatments, says it “was the shock of a lifetime” when an ultrasound revealed three fetuses.

She and her husband, Michael, say triplets don’t run in their families. Their older sons are 4 and 2.

Neonatologist Dr. Savitri Kumar at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where the triplets were born Jan. 25, says data on triplet births by natural conception is “very variable from one in 60,000 to one in 2 million.” Kumar says one-in-a-million is “the most commonly quoted.”