This family has doubled their pleasure — three times over.
Meet Ashton and Eric Rawley of Singers Glen, Virginia, who are now the proud parents of three sets of twins, all of whom are under the age of 6 and were conceived in three different ways.
Initially, the couple struggled with infertility and weren’t sure they’d ever be able to have children.
“It felt like everyone around us was living our dream,” Ashton, 33, told Today Parents. “They were all having babies. It was one pregnancy announcement after another. That was really hard for us because we wanted it so badly.”
In 2016, they turned to in vitro fertilization, transferring two embryos, and had twin girls, Amelia and Eloise, now 5.
When it came time to expand their family, the Rawleys once again turned to IVF. This time they transferred only one embryo, hoping for a healthy third baby to round out their brood. But the embryo split into two, producing identical twin boys they named Owen and Wyatt, who will celebrate their third birthday in September.
According to James Grifo, MD, Ph.D., director of the NYU Langone Fertility Center, the statistical chance of this happening is 1%.
In 2021, the couple received startling news. Ashton, 33, had been feeling ill and learned she was expecting again.
“I felt pregnant — I was having all my usual symptoms — but we’d never conceived without fertility treatments,” she said.
But she wasn’t just carrying one child. She was pregnant with twins — naturally.
On March 16, Rose and Violet arrived and, after spending 22 days in the NICU, they are now home with their siblings.
Grifo told Today that natural conception after IVF is “uncommon” but possible.
“Pregnancy simply comes down to chance, and although IVF can help your chances, there’s still a lot of randomness in the process,” Grifo told Today. “There is a possibility of getting pregnant naturally — without the intervention of assisted reproductive technologies — after you’ve had one IVF pregnancy. Even in some cases of unexplained infertility, after one IVF baby, couples end up getting pregnant on their own the next time around.”
But, clearly, there is nothing common about Ashton’s journey. Or her now-hectic daily routine.
“We feel so blessed to have three sets of twins,” she said. “They really have such a special connection. With the older ones, there’s a lot of nights where they’re sleeping in each other’s beds and whispering. I’ll have to go in there and be like, ‘Hey, it’s time for bed.'”
She said her household is “total chaos,” adding, “I tell people that it’s like riding a bike that’s on fire.”
