A Mississippi woman delivered surprise quadruplets this month!

What? How?!

It turns out Kimberly Fugate was expecting identical triplet girls.

The mom to a 10-year old discovered the news of the triplets this past November 13th.  When the then 41-year old mom went into labor at  the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), she delivered three healthy babies as expected, a day before her 42nd birthday on February 8. 

Then her doctor looked at her and said, “More feet!”

She then delivered a fourth baby girl, surprising Fugate, her husband and her doctor,  Dr. James Bofill, director of maternal-fetal medicine at UMMC, who said he was embarrassed for missing the 4th baby in a first of his 27-year career.

“No one really knows what makes a single zygote separate into identical twins or identical triplets, or in this case, identical quadruplets,”  Bofill told The Clarion Ledger. “It’s definitely an accident; it’s not supposed to happen and, in some cases, like Ms. Fugate’s, it happens in a spectacular manner.”

The baby girls – Kenleigh, Kristen, Kaleigh and Kelsey – were born premature at 28 weeks and will remain in the hospital until May.