For Nakuru mother, it's a fourfold blessing

A Nakuru mother is celebrating the arrival of her new born children — quadruplets in the form of two sets of identical twins.

“The babies decided to make their entrance to the world sooner than expected,” Susan Chepkemei, 31, told The Standard at the Margaret Kenyatta Mother and Baby Unit in Nakuru. “It’s amazing!”

The four babies—four girls—made their grand arrival one minute apart during the delivery by Cesarean section two weeks ago.

“When the doctor asked me to go for an ultrasound, I was only expecting one child. To my surprise, he told me I was expecting triplets. I received the news with gratitude and my husband was happy as well,” said Chepkemei.

On December 31, when Chepkemei went to Nakuru County Teaching and Referral Hospital for delivery, she was expecting three babies only to give birth to four.

“My family was overjoyed when they heard I had delivered four babies. When my husband received the news, he said he was ready to take care of them all,” she added.

The mother has named them and can identify each of them by name and how they were delivered from the first to the fourth baby, despite them all looking alike.

Chepkemei said she can also tell them by the number of kilogrammes each of them weighed at birth.

She said that although the family was gifted four times the joy when she gave birth to the quadruplets, she is concerned that in her current situation, it would struggle to raise them.

“For now, I am not working and my husband who is employed cannot meet all our needs considering I have new-born babies. I am requesting financial assistance so that I can take good care of them. It’s hard to feed such a number of babies as I have two more children at home aged 11 and five years old,” said Chepkemei.

Chepkemei said she had decided not to have any more children, but she will discuss the matter with her husband.

“For now my family and I have had enough children. Six is a good number, but I will talk about it with my husband and hear what he has to say,” she said.

According to the Nurse In Charge at the Nakuru County Teaching and Referral Hospital Veronicah Ongwae, the babies were admitted at the newborn unit because they were born prematurely.

“The babies were born prematurely at 32 weeks instead of 38 weeks. That is why we had to put them at the newborn unit for them to gain weight before we can transfer them to the Kangaroo wards,” she said.

Brenda Chemeli, a nutritionist at the facility, said that the babies will not need any additional food apart from the mother’s breast milk until  they are six months old.

“The quadruplets are healthy. The mother will need to breastfeed them exclusively for six months for them to gain weight and also to avoid infections because the incubators contain germs,” Chemeli said.