A LA Mom Went To Her Doctor Expecting Twins. She Left With Very Different News
Nyla Craft went to a routine doctor's appointment earlier this year, saw two distinct shapes on the ultrasound, and told herself she was having twins. The doctor corrected her: there were three. The triplets, all boys, were named Elio, Elias, and Enzo, and were conceived naturally without fertility treatments, a fact that medical professionals at Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center described as an uncommon occurrence. Multiples do run in Craft's family, she acknowledged, with her mother being a twin and triplets appearing elsewhere in her family tree, all boys as well, she noted, skipping a few generations before landing on her. The birth required roughly 15 specialists in the delivery room compared to the usual five, and when Craft heard each of the three boys cry in succession, she said she started weeping, telling CBS Los Angeles that hearing them all at once made her say thank God, they are good. She had carried close to 19 pounds of baby, and said that knowing the number afterward made her pain during the pregnancy finally make sense.
The combined birth weight of the three boys was 19.3 pounds, with each baby individually topping six pounds, a remarkable figure given that triplets typically weigh around three and a half pounds each at birth. The total put the family just short of the Guinness World Record for the heaviest living triplets, which stands at 22 pounds and 12.6 ounces, set by a Colorado family in 2003. Two of the brothers are identical twins, making Elio, Elias, and Enzo what doctors describe as a mixed set of triplets: two identical siblings alongside one fraternal brother. All three were born full-term with no complications, and Dr. Rohit Passi, chief of neonatology at Kaiser Permanente South Bay Medical Center, described their combined weight as a remarkably healthy start for triplets. The boys were born on their father Marco Bernal's birthday, a detail the family has said made the whole thing feel especially meant to be. Elio, Elias, and Enzo join two older siblings in the house, making five children under the age of five in South Los Angeles. Craft said the family is just so happy and that seeing them out and sitting with everyone is everything.
