Mother of 8 Adds Triplets at 54
A 54-year-old mother of eight who has 15 grandchildren gave birth Saturday to triplets.
Arcelia Garcia gave birth by caesarean section to three healthy girls about 5 p.m. at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital.
The triplets, who weigh about 4 or 5 pounds each, were born within about five minutes of each other.
“It went very smoothly. Everything went as planned,” said Francisco Garcia, 34, one of Garcia’s sons.
All of Arcelia Garcia’s eight children were at the hospital to be with their mother.
She plans to return to work as a farm worker as soon as her health and the babies allow, she said before the births.
A woman in her 50s pregnant with triplets is extremely rare, especially without the aid of fertility drugs, said Tom Easterling, a maternal and fetal medicine specialist at the University of Washington Medical Center. Garcia’s pregnancy was natural.
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