Three sisters born in nine months. but they are not triplets! Mother gave birth to premature twins after falling pregnant weeks after her first child

They’re sisters, all three four years old – but remarkably, these three little girls aren’t triplets.

The eldest, Cara, was just nine months old when she became the big sister of twins Laura and Jenna.

Her mother, 40-year-old Tessa Singh, became pregnant again less than 12 weeks after her birth, and the twins were born prematurely at 28 weeks.

This means that for three months of the year, the sisters are all the same age.

Mrs. Singh says: “People can’t believe it when I tell them that all the girls are the same age, even though they’re not triplets.

I can’t believe I’ve given birth to three girls in just nine months. I’ve really had my work cut out for me.

Mrs Singh, a teacher, and her husband Daynie, 39, a hairdresser, had their first daughter Cara in July 2008. They started trying for another baby three months later.

Ms. Singh said, “We wanted to have babies every few months, so we thought that when Cara was three months old, we should start trying, because we didn’t know how long it would take.

If it was going to take a year or more to get pregnant, we wanted to start trying right away. In fact, I got pregnant the first time we started trying, which was a bit of a surprise.”

The couple, who live in Chorlton, Manchester, got another surprise when Mrs Singh had an ultrasound scan at 12 weeks and the sonographer told her she was expecting twins.

She said: “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was in shock. I’ve had a lot more morning sickness during this pregnancy, but I never imagined I’d be carrying twins. There are no twins in either of our families.

The hospital offered me some advice after I heard the news. I think they thought that three babies in less than nine months was a bit too much to handle.

We discussed it and decided it was daunting, but as long as we were organized, we could manage.

But in April 2009, when Ms. Singh was 27 weeks pregnant, she went into premature labor.

She recalls: “It was so frightening to know that the babies were on their way at such an early stage. We didn’t even know if they were going to survive. We really thought we were going to lose them.

Doctors at the Royal Oldham Infirmary managed to delay contractions for a week. Then the twins were delivered, each weighing just 1.5 kg.

The girls were transferred to St Mary’s Hospital in Manchester. Jenna suffered two brain haemorrhages, a hole in her heart and a collapsed lung.

Mrs Singh said, “The birth of the twins was a terrifying time for us. They were so small and in such bad shape. At one point, we said goodbye to Jenna, but amazingly, she managed to fight on.”

Jenna was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and the doctors warned Mrs. Singh that she might never walk.

But she proved the doctors wrong, which Ms. Singh believes is due to the close relationship she has with her sisters.

She says: “They have such a strong bond. Cara was only nine months old when the twins were born, so she’s never known life without them.

It’s like they’re all triplets. They’re never apart from each other. She has as strong a bond with the twins as they have with each other. They always want to sleep together in the same bed.

Jenna has had a lot of help from her sisters. It gave her the purpose and motivation to follow them, which helped her enormously.”

She added: “It may have been a shock to give birth to three babies in nine months, but I wouldn’t change that for the world.”

Mrs Singh is a fundraiser for the Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Charity. She has just completed the London Marathon to raise funds.

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