Baltimore couple welcomes rare identical triplets

Baltimore couple welcomes rare identical triplets, A hockey-loving Baltimore couple just had the ultimate hat trick.

Kristen and Thomas Hewitt welcomed a rare set of identical triplets — Thomas III, Finnegan and Oliver — on Oct. 6 at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center.

The healthy babies, dubbed the “Hewitt Hat Trick” by their recreational hockey-playing dad, were conceived without the use of fertility drugs and were born via C-section after 33.5 weeks in the womb.

The lookalike boys are the couple’s first children and have joined the family’s 11-year-old Beagle-Shepard mix Jersey in their Hampden neighborhood home.  

“We want to run things like a small army and be really regimented,” the new dad told the Baltimore Sun.  “In reality, it'll be more like a pirate ship complete with mutinies.”

That organized routine started as soon as the babies came home, he said. To avoid confusion, the couple color-coded the new boys’ wardrobes and each baby wears a coordinating string around his wrist.

Kristen, 35, and Thomas, 33, had been trying to conceive for more than two years when Kristen found out that she was pregnant in mid-March. The soon-be-be parents got the triple surprise at Kristen’s first ultrasound. The technician was quiet during the produce, so Thomas tried to break the silence.

“I jokingly said ‘So is there more than one in there?’” he said. “The technician then said ‘Yes,’ and then I asked ‘is there more than two?’ and again she said ‘Yes, actually there are three!’”

Kristin left her job in real estate in August and spent the last week and a half of her pregnancy on bedrest in the hospital.The premature babies, born about six weeks early, spent about two weeks in intensive care. All three are now in excellent condition, Kristen’s doctor, Victor A. Khouzami, said.

“Through our relationship, we've found that Tom and I work the best under pressure, so we take the triplets as not only a blessing, but also a challenge that we're most certainly up for,” Kristen said.

Triplets generally are uncommon, and only about 10 percent of the time are they identical, according to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. More commonly, all three triplets are fraternal or the set of three contains just a pair of identical twins.

Identical triplets have been born this year in Washington, Montana and New York.
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