A mother who longed for a bigger family after having three children finally had her prayers answered when she welcomed quadruplets, after enduring six devastating miscarriages.
Childhood sweethearts April, 42, and Phil Gardner – who now spend $400 a week on food and slept for just 45 minutes a night when their youngest four were babies – were teenagers when they welcomed their first child, Rilee, now 24.
Childhood sweethearts April, 42, and Phil Gardner – who now spend $400 a week on food and slept for just 45 minutes a night when their youngest four were babies – were teenagers when they welcomed their first child, Rilee, now 24.
Everything went like clockwork, according to April, from Taylorville, Utah, leaving them completely unprepared for the problems ahead when they boosted their brood to include Whitlee, 18, Jaxton, seven, and quadruplets Ryker, Tallon, Bowen and Berklee, who are now four.
April, who suffers with fertility issues such as polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis, had six marriages before successfully giving birth to her quadruplets thanks to hormone injections which helped stimulate her ovaries.
Reflecting on her incredible journey, April, who works in financial services, said: ‘The miscarriages were obviously very hard to take. There were times when I blamed myself.
Six months later, in early 2006, April found out she was pregnant again – but felt too afraid to tell anybody aside from Phil.
Heartbreakingly, at just six weeks, she began cramping, later discovering she had lost the baby.
‘After that, I felt like I needed a break for a while,’ she recalled. ‘We didn’t try again until the end of 2006. By then, I had picked myself back up and told myself, “Maybe your body just needed a chance to rest.”
After eight months of trying, April sought advice from her doctor in mid-2007, who discovered she was having a severe endometriosis flare-up.
‘Doctors thought the flare-up was the reason I’d been struggling to conceive,’ she said. ‘Thankfully, my ovaries were unaffected, so I figured I would be able to start trying for a baby again soon, once my body had recovered.’
But sadly, April suffered two more miscarriages between 2008 and 2010 – one at eight weeks and the other at 10.
While the news was hard to hear, she felt she at least had some answers.
Prescribed follistim and progesterone injections to help stimulate her ovaries, after three months, she fell pregnant before miscarrying for a fifth time just six weeks later.
In 2012, following injections at the fertility clinic, April discovered she was expecting again. And this time, she carried her baby to full term, with little Jaxton arriving in February 2013.
After that, the couple did not think they would have any more children.
But, in early 2015, they became aware of the huge age gap between Jaxton and his sisters and decided they wanted to give him a sibling to grow up with.
So, returning to the same fertility clinic in Alabama that had helped them before, April began follistim and progesterone injections again – conceiving after just two months, only for a bombshell to be dropped at her six-week scan.
She said: ‘I remember looking up at the screen and seeing two little blobs. I cried out, “Oh my gosh, it’s twins!” The sonographer told me she could see more than two. She fetched a doctor to check and they counted six.
‘Thankfully, April’s closely monitored pregnancy progressed very well. After hearing about her story, several other military families even banded together to donate baby items to her.
As predicted by doctors, two of the fetuses still had no heartbeat by 10 weeks and their tissue was absorbed by the others.
But the four remaining babies were going strong – giving April the confidence to tell her family at 13 weeks.
Then, at 30 weeks and two days, she finally delivered her non-identical quads – three boys and a girl – at Baptist Medical Center East in Montgomery, Alabama by cesarean section, just after 6:30am on October 16, 2015.
First came Ryker, weighing 3lb 1oz, followed by Tallon at 2lb 12oz, then Bowen and finally the only girl, Berklee – both 2lb 8oz.
After five weeks, the babies were all sent home within two days of each other – first Ryker and Tallon on the same day, then Berklee and finally Bowen.
Now, they are thriving four year olds, who have forged an unbreakable sibling bond.
