Modern medicine can be wonderful and instrumental in helping people create the family of their dreams. One Mississippi couple knows this firsthand. Haylee and Shawn Ladner had quintuplets thanks to intrauterine insemination and a very rare division of one egg into four parts.
Identical sisters Adalyn, Everleigh, Malley, and Magnolia and their brother Jake were born on February 16, 2023. Proud parents Haylee and Shawn shared photos of them in matching Easter outfits on April 12. It is so heartwarming to see them all together and thriving.
The babies are getting stronger and stronger every day in neonatal intensive care at the Kathy and Joe Sanderson Tower at Children’s of Mississippi Hospital. Haylee and Shawn celebrated Easter there with their bundles of joy.
“It was really hard not to cry,” Haylee said about the first family photo. “It was just such a beautiful moment for us.”
“Seeing them all together, I was, we’ve really got five kids now!” added Shawn. It “melted” Haylee’s heart to see her babies all together. The couple is just so happy for this new journey into parenthood.
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“They hadn’t been all together like that since they were inside of me. So that was the first time they all five had been right next to each other in a very long time,” Haylee gushed. “It was just so surreal, and it was literally such a special moment for us.”
Haylee’s pregnancy was nothing short of miraculous. “Haylee's pregnancy was quite rare,” explained Rachael Morris, MD. She is an associate professor of maternal fetal medicine and cared for Haylee and delivered the babies.
“She had a quintuplet pregnancy with four identical females,” she explained. “Reports of spontaneous quintuplets vary but are about 1 in 60 million. There are very few reports of identical quadruplets in the literature to date. Reported incidence is 1 in 10 to 15 million pregnancies. There is only one other report of this combination in the literature from 2018.”
Haylee updated the public on the babies’ health. “They’re doing, literally, amazing. Four of them are 5 pounds and our smallest, that was like 1 pound and 11 ounces at birth, is now over 4 pounds,” she said. “So they’re doing absolutely wonderful.”
All of the babies are bottle feeding. They alternate between a bottle and a feeding tube. Three of the babies are completely off respiratory support. The two who remain “are really close to completely being off of respiratory support.”
It is unknown at this time when the babies will be able to go home. Haylee and Shawn believe it will be in “a few weeks.” They cannot wait.
