Family prepares for quadruplets, conceived without fertility treatment

MURRAY — Anthony Consolo clearly remembers what he discovered the night he took his newly pregnant wife to the emergency room.

"It was a bit of shock mixed with excitement," he said. "A dash of disbelief with a quart of exhilaration. But I think the doctor was more shocked than I was."

It was only then that he definitively learned the couple was having a baby. And another baby. And another. And another. He and his wife, Natalie, without the help of any fertility treatment, conceived quadruplets.

Natalie Consolo said she noticed some spotting early on and feared she was having a miscarriage. Instead, the trip to the emergency room revealed that their family of three, including daughter Dorothy, 22 months, would soon become a family of seven.

"We are thrilled," Anthony Consolo said. "We see it as a blessing. A great opportunity to bring four babies into the world at the same time. Any trepidation or fear we have is overwhelmed by the love we have for our kids."

Sitting together in Natalie Consolo's hospital room Tuesday at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray on a day devoted to love, the couple appeared a more powerful picture of it than any Valentine's Day greeting card. Too uncomfortable to conduct a full interview, Natalie Consolo and her husband said she is determined to carry the babies as long as possible before delivery.

"Every day they're in there, it's three days that they're not in intensive care," Anthony Consolo said, his hand on his wife's stomach. "We know the babies are going to be born healthy, born strong and they have a fantastic mom that they're coming from."

Dr. Cara Heuser, a maternal fetal medicine specialist and Natalie Consolo's doctor, said the chance of conceiving quadruplets is 1 in 500,000. Ninety percent of those who do conceive quadruplets do so with the assistance of medical technology.

Heuser said the average gestation for a quadruplet pregnancy is 30 weeks. Natalie Consolo hit the 31-week mark on Monday.

"Not all pregnancies make it as far as Natalie has already," Heuser said. "She's been quite a trooper."

The goal is to make it 33 weeks. Four teams have been prepared to handle the delivery. This will be Heuser's second time delivering quadruplets — the only two in the hospital's history.

"I think we'll be ready and we're excited to meet them," Heuser said.