Tiny trio thriving

3:00pm Thursday 29th May 2008

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THEY may be medically identical but proud parents Guy and Emma Gagen have no trouble telling their triplet sons apart.

They were born six weeks early on March 10 and Archie, who weighed in at 3lb 11oz at birth, is now 8lb 8oz; Henry was 4lb 15oz at birth and is now 10lb 5oz and Baxter who was 5lbs is now 9lb 14oz.

All three are doing well and hardly a day passes when family or friends in Mildenhall do not pop in the see them.

Emma's father David Fishlock, who lives nearby with her mother Mary, has helped feed his three grandsons ever since they arrived home two weeks after being born.

Mr Fishlock, a retired builder, has called round at 1.30am every morning to help with the night feed that only this week has been brought forward to 11pm so that mum and dad and the three boys - and granddad of course - can get some sleep.

Even so the triplets are awake again between 5am to 5.30am for their first feed of the day.

Life at home has had to be adjusted around the boys and their demands to be fed and changed.

The brothers were born by Caesarian section at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

Emma, 33, who formerly taught at Pinewood School near Shrivenham, and Guy, 36, an agriculture policy lobbyist with the NFU, had known since two months after conception that they were having triplets.

They had been married about six years and when no child was conceived they turned to IVF for some help.

They had undergone their second course of IVF when Emma fell pregnant, not realising to start with that they had an instant family on the way.

Both said they would never forget the moment scans revealed that instead of one baby or even twins, Emma was carrying three.

"From the first scan we knew it was going to be triplets and that was a bit of a shock," said Emma.

Guy said: "It was not only a shock for us but for the nurses and doctors, too. They called for the consultant and when he came in and saw the scans he was also shocked."

When the triplets arrived their parents and doctors had no way of telling they were identical.

Guy said they had been told the odds of having identical triplets was rare because it meant that one egg had split into three.

The only problem was that the Oxford hospital did not have room for three babies and their mother so the boys were sent to a hospital in Basingstoke leaving Guy with the dilemma of having to visit his wife in one direction and their three children in the other.

They were apart for just 48 hours before mum and three sons were reunited.

Having three babies means having to acquire three sets of everything. Emma said: "People have been very generous.

"People I knew at school have loaned us things and friends and people from the village have been magnificent."

Emma's parents have even commissioned pram makers Silver Cross to adapt a twin pram especially for triplets.