Family doubles with rare birth of identical triplets
Misty Roots sits on the surgery table, her hospital gown open in the back, the front stretched below her knees by her bulging belly.
An anesthesiologist inserts a needle into her spine. A nurse puts her hands on Misty’s shoulders and talks softly.
Misty rests her forehead on the nurse’s chest. Tears trail down her freckled cheeks.
She thought her identical triplets never would get here. Now that the girls are set to arrive, Misty is scared.
Misty Roots is 21.
Her husband, Logan, is 28, their daughter Fianna, 17 months.
“People assume we are bad parents by the way we look,” Misty says, referring to their tattoos and body piercings. “But we are a very loving family. Just because we are young doesn’t mean we can’t do it.”
“We wouldn’t think of ourselves as superstar parents, but we are good parents,” Logan adds.
They met in Phoenix, where she grew up Misty Reeves. Shortly before Fianna was born, they moved to Lincoln, and Logan went to work for his dad, artist Larry Roots.
“Phoenix is not a good place to raise kids,” Misty says. “There’s too much crime. Drugs.”
They had hoped to marry when they were settled and had some money saved. But then in late November, Misty glanced at the calendar.
“I was 11 days late,” she recalls.
They hadn’t really planned to have more children.
In December, an ultrasound technician rolls the transducer across Misty’s belly and pauses.
Misty sees it, too.
“Two little balls next to each other,” she recalls. “Then they jumped apart.
“I looked at the ultrasound guy and thought: ‘Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it.’”
So how do you feel about twins?
Week 13
Misty is off to see Sean Kenney, a maternal fetal medicine physician specializing in high-risk pregnancy. All multiple pregnancies are considered high risk, but she is so small — 4-foot-11, 98 pounds, size 00. Kenney will monitor her pregnancy closely.
Misty stretches out on the table and watches the screen. She hopes they can tell the gender.
There’s baby A, and there’s baby B.
The nurse stops. She calls in a colleague. They stare at the fuzzy gray screen.
Misty’s heart quickens.
“Don’t tell me,” she whispers to herself.
The nurses’ eyes meet.
“Yup, there’s another one.”
Misty bursts into tears.
Lying alone in the darkened room, she thinks about her own upbringing. Her parents never married. She and her brother were raised by a grandmother.
“We grew up really fast.”
Misty herself struggled with drugs and alcohol. Homelessness. She says she was raped twice, the first time at 14.
“That’s how I lost my virginity,” she says.
Things turned around when she was 17. She went into rehab, went back to high school and graduated.
She was 19 when she met Logan. They knew from the start they had something special.
Will it be enough, she wonders to herself in the examining room.
“We don’t have the money and resources to take care of three babies. I don’t want my kids to live in a dump. What if I am a bad parent?”
She’s not sure how she will tell Logan.
She goes to see him at work. “They couldn’t find out the sexes of all three babies,” she tells him, then waits.
“He just stood there and stared at me like I was Satan. Maybe it was more of a deer-in-the-headlights look. … It was a very awkward moment.”
Earlier, they had talked about how funny it would be if she had triplets. They no longer joke.
“All of our jokes have come true,” Logan says.
Kenney sees only one placenta and one sac. He thinks the triplets may be identical.
Identical triplets are so rare no one really knows the odds. Estimates range from once in every 50,000 to 200 million births.
By comparison, odds of winning the lottery are one in 18 million to 120 million.
In 15 years, Kenney says, he has seen only four “spontaneous” triplets, those that occur without fertility treatment.
The Roots babies will be his first identical triplets.
Week 27
It is May 10, the night before Mother’s Day, and Misty Reeves and Logan Roots are about to get married.
“I am nervous and anxious,” Misty says, fanning herself with her hand.
Her grandmother made the arrangements from Phoenix, and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will perform the ceremony in their Air Park home.
They decided to marry now because of the risks associated with the pregnancy.
“Everyone talks about what they saw on the Discovery Channel last night,” Logan says.
“People say: ‘I read you can hemorrhage and die,’” Misty adds. “‘You are so small you could have a stroke …’
“They shouldn’t let pregnant women watch the Discovery Channel,” she says.
“Or if they do they should split between the good and the bad stories,” Logan says. “Or at least they should start a show saying, ‘This baby turned out fine.’”
But they know there are risks.
“We want to get married now for the legal reasons,” he says.
A car pulls up. Three men in dark suits walk toward the door.
Misty’s leg bounces nervously. She chews on a fingernail.
“You think kids are a big commitment,” she says. “But with this, there is all this legal stuff and paperwork.”
The doorbell rings.
Misty runs to the bathroom, excusing herself midflight.
“It’s the hormones,” she says, brushing away tears.
At 7:14 p.m., Misty and Logan hold hands and face each other. Fianna sits quietly at their feet, intently plucking petals from a carnation. Misty holds a bouquet sent by her grandmother.
Bishop Cody Hollist recites the vows. Logan, do you promise to love, honor, cherish Misty, for better or for worse, until death do you part?
“I do,” Logan says.
Misty bounces on her toes.
“Good!”
She makes the same promise to Logan. They kiss.
“Oh, I’m sooo happy,” Misty says.
“Wow, that is pretty intense,” Logan adds, running his hand through his short hair. “It’s a pretty powerful thing.”
Hollist breathes a sigh of relief.
“This was my first wedding,” he confesses.
“Mine, too,” Misty says.
Week 28
Misty and Logan arrive at Kenney’s office for her checkup.
She steps on the scale: 142 pounds.
In the darkened room, screens broadcast ultrasound images.
“They look a lot bigger,” Logan says nervously, clutching his baseball cap in his hand.
“They are a lot bigger. They are huge,” Misty says. “And they are so ready to come out.”
Nurse Jenny Flanders checks the weights. Baby A is 2 pounds, 3 ounces. Baby B is 2 pounds, 7 ounces. Baby C is 2 pounds, 5 ounces.
“Have you named them?” she asks.
Baby A is Nova Emily, as in supernova. “She exploded into three babies,” Misty explains.
Baby B is Scarlett Jean. “I just like that name. It sounds like it is from the 1920s.”
Baby C is Karma Isabella. “She was the last one to be found. She will bring us good karma.”
May 30 will mark week 30. Misty hopes Kenney will deliver the babies that day.
“I know you’re uncomfortable,” he tells her. But the longer the babies remain in the womb, the better off they will be.
“We’d like to get you to 32 weeks.”
Misty is miserable.
“I hurt all over,” she says. “My legs get like Jell-O, and I feel like they are going to give out.”
She can’t sleep. It seems as if one of the babies is always kicking another, turning, stretching, bouncing around. It’s hard to breathe, especially when she lies down. It hurts to walk.
“This is not going to kill her, is it?” Logan asks.
Flanders smiles.
“No … but I guess it depends on who you ask.”
Week 30
Misty is not happy.
“He told me at 32 weeks we would negotiate. Now he’s telling me 35 weeks,” she says.
She’s gained 3 pounds in seven days.
“In my head, it feels like I gain 10 pounds a day,” she says.
Her belly button has long disappeared. She has stretch marks on stretch marks. And she has a rash. She itches all over, especially on her bulging belly.
Kenney gives her medication for the rash and the pain.
“I don’t want to be pregnant with triplets anymore,” she tells him. “I love my babies, but …”
He empathizes but says he will not deliver this early unless there’s a medical emergency.
She’s glad she’s been able to carry the triplets this long.
“But I hope to have them soon, though.”
Week 31
Her feet look like water balloons. The itching is driving her crazy. She’s exhausted.
“I do squats every night. I go up and down the stairs every day. Nothing is working.”
It will be so much better after the babies are born, she thinks.
Then there is the reality.
Their family will double in size. They will have four children younger than 2.
“We don’t even have a car that will fit all of us,” Misty says during her June 10 visit to Kenney’s office. “We will have to make two trips just to bring them home from the hospital.”
The numbers are mind-boggling, Logan says.
Three cribs. Three infant seats. Three swings. Six socks. Six shoes. Thirty-six diapers a day. They read somewhere that triplets go through 10,000 diapers the first year. At $10 for a pack of 20, that’s $5,000, and that’s not counting Fianna.
Misty worries about Fianna.
“She’s so used to being the center of attention. It breaks my heart when I think about it.”
Kenney walks in. He tells Misty he will deliver the babies by Caesarean section at 7:30 a.m. on June 26.
Misty glows.
Standing at the counter to make her next appointment, she does a little dance.
“June 26,” she sings.
Week 32
The scale reads 150 pounds.
“Those babies grew,” nurse Flanders says. “The fact that you have gone this long is really good.”
“Nine da-ayss,” Misty says.
On the ultrasound table, they estimate weights: 4 pounds, 3 ounces, 4 pounds, 2 ounces, and 3 pounds, 6 ounces.
“Gee, I have 12 pounds of babies inside of me right now,” Misty marvels.
Just for the fun of it, they measure her belly — 43 inches around, 21 inches from top to bottom.
“Oh, God,” Misty groans.
Week 33
Contractions start on the evening of June 19. Logan tracks them on paper.
By 12:30 a.m., they head for Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center, where they give Misty morphine for the pain.
Minutes later, a monitor reveals the babies’ heartbeats have slowed.
“I didn’t know it would drug the babies,” she says, upset and worried.
Logan sleeps on a couch in the room. Misty can’t sleep. She stares at the machines, chews on ice and uses a plastic spoon handle to scratch her tummy.
Kenney and nurse Sherrie Young explain the procedure.
“I’m in the Top 3 for speed,” Kenney tells her.
“I have concerns,” Misty says. “Can you die from the bleeding?”
Kenney reassures her. “It’s pretty unusual in this hospital.”
Misty replies: “Oh, I don’t know, I have crazy luck.”
Delivery is set for 1 p.m. It’s 9 in the morning.
“I am so hungry,” Misty says.
“I would totally sneak you stuff if it wouldn’t kill you,” Logan says.
“Yeah, I don’t feel like choking on my vomit,” she jokes.
Her back aches. Logan massages it. Misty groans with relief.
When pediatrician Terra Bowers stops in, Misty asks again about the risks.
“Have you been watching the Discovery Channel again? I told you to stop doing that,” she says. “Everything will go just fine. If something comes up, we’ll deal with it.”
Says Misty: “It’s scary having babies.”
At 12:15 p.m., Misty is prepped for surgery. Logan changes into sterile scrubs, booties and a cap. They walk into Delivery Room No. 1. Misty sits on the table.
Bowers and Kenney scrub in. Three nurses line up, each holding a warmed receiving blanket.
Logan holds Misty’s hand and leans close.
At 1:27.17, Nova is born.
Scarlett comes at 1:27.42
Karma at 1:28.19.
Each baby gets her own room and her own team of doctors and nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit. They clear airways, weigh and measure the babies and test for reflexes.
Nova weighs 3 pounds, 11 ounces. Scarlett is 3 pounds, 10.2 ounces. Karma, 3 pounds, 7.5 ounces.
As is common with preemies, their lungs are not fully developed. They are placed on machines to help them breathe and given a drug to help their lungs develop.
Logan hurries in to see Nova get her first bath. He bends down and coos in her ear. “Hi there …”
He repeats this gentle introduction three times.
Are they all right? Be honest with me.
Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Lorri Niemeyer reassures him the girls are doing great. The first 48 hours are critical.
It’s June 24, and Misty is ready to go home. Before she leaves the hospital, NICU staff allow her and Logan hold and bottle feed their babies for the first time.
Doctors say the girls should be able to go home July 11.
“I am blessed,” Misty says. “I am not a religious person, but if anything could change my mind, it was this experience.”
She knows it won’t be easy.
“We’re strong,” she says. “But it is stressful to think about.”
Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.
An anesthesiologist inserts a needle into her spine. A nurse puts her hands on Misty’s shoulders and talks softly.
Misty rests her forehead on the nurse’s chest. Tears trail down her freckled cheeks.
She thought her identical triplets never would get here. Now that the girls are set to arrive, Misty is scared.
Misty Roots is 21.
Her husband, Logan, is 28, their daughter Fianna, 17 months.
“People assume we are bad parents by the way we look,” Misty says, referring to their tattoos and body piercings. “But we are a very loving family. Just because we are young doesn’t mean we can’t do it.”
“We wouldn’t think of ourselves as superstar parents, but we are good parents,” Logan adds.
They met in Phoenix, where she grew up Misty Reeves. Shortly before Fianna was born, they moved to Lincoln, and Logan went to work for his dad, artist Larry Roots.
“Phoenix is not a good place to raise kids,” Misty says. “There’s too much crime. Drugs.”
They had hoped to marry when they were settled and had some money saved. But then in late November, Misty glanced at the calendar.
“I was 11 days late,” she recalls.
They hadn’t really planned to have more children.
In December, an ultrasound technician rolls the transducer across Misty’s belly and pauses.
Misty sees it, too.
“Two little balls next to each other,” she recalls. “Then they jumped apart.
“I looked at the ultrasound guy and thought: ‘Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it.’”
So how do you feel about twins?
Week 13
Misty is off to see Sean Kenney, a maternal fetal medicine physician specializing in high-risk pregnancy. All multiple pregnancies are considered high risk, but she is so small — 4-foot-11, 98 pounds, size 00. Kenney will monitor her pregnancy closely.
Misty stretches out on the table and watches the screen. She hopes they can tell the gender.
There’s baby A, and there’s baby B.
The nurse stops. She calls in a colleague. They stare at the fuzzy gray screen.
Misty’s heart quickens.
“Don’t tell me,” she whispers to herself.
The nurses’ eyes meet.
“Yup, there’s another one.”
Misty bursts into tears.
Lying alone in the darkened room, she thinks about her own upbringing. Her parents never married. She and her brother were raised by a grandmother.
“We grew up really fast.”
Misty herself struggled with drugs and alcohol. Homelessness. She says she was raped twice, the first time at 14.
“That’s how I lost my virginity,” she says.
Things turned around when she was 17. She went into rehab, went back to high school and graduated.
She was 19 when she met Logan. They knew from the start they had something special.
Will it be enough, she wonders to herself in the examining room.
“We don’t have the money and resources to take care of three babies. I don’t want my kids to live in a dump. What if I am a bad parent?”
She’s not sure how she will tell Logan.
She goes to see him at work. “They couldn’t find out the sexes of all three babies,” she tells him, then waits.
“He just stood there and stared at me like I was Satan. Maybe it was more of a deer-in-the-headlights look. … It was a very awkward moment.”
Earlier, they had talked about how funny it would be if she had triplets. They no longer joke.
“All of our jokes have come true,” Logan says.
Kenney sees only one placenta and one sac. He thinks the triplets may be identical.
Identical triplets are so rare no one really knows the odds. Estimates range from once in every 50,000 to 200 million births.
By comparison, odds of winning the lottery are one in 18 million to 120 million.
In 15 years, Kenney says, he has seen only four “spontaneous” triplets, those that occur without fertility treatment.
The Roots babies will be his first identical triplets.
Week 27
It is May 10, the night before Mother’s Day, and Misty Reeves and Logan Roots are about to get married.
“I am nervous and anxious,” Misty says, fanning herself with her hand.
Her grandmother made the arrangements from Phoenix, and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will perform the ceremony in their Air Park home.
They decided to marry now because of the risks associated with the pregnancy.
“Everyone talks about what they saw on the Discovery Channel last night,” Logan says.
“People say: ‘I read you can hemorrhage and die,’” Misty adds. “‘You are so small you could have a stroke …’
“They shouldn’t let pregnant women watch the Discovery Channel,” she says.
“Or if they do they should split between the good and the bad stories,” Logan says. “Or at least they should start a show saying, ‘This baby turned out fine.’”
But they know there are risks.
“We want to get married now for the legal reasons,” he says.
A car pulls up. Three men in dark suits walk toward the door.
Misty’s leg bounces nervously. She chews on a fingernail.
“You think kids are a big commitment,” she says. “But with this, there is all this legal stuff and paperwork.”
The doorbell rings.
Misty runs to the bathroom, excusing herself midflight.
“It’s the hormones,” she says, brushing away tears.
At 7:14 p.m., Misty and Logan hold hands and face each other. Fianna sits quietly at their feet, intently plucking petals from a carnation. Misty holds a bouquet sent by her grandmother.
Bishop Cody Hollist recites the vows. Logan, do you promise to love, honor, cherish Misty, for better or for worse, until death do you part?
“I do,” Logan says.
Misty bounces on her toes.
“Good!”
She makes the same promise to Logan. They kiss.
“Oh, I’m sooo happy,” Misty says.
“Wow, that is pretty intense,” Logan adds, running his hand through his short hair. “It’s a pretty powerful thing.”
Hollist breathes a sigh of relief.
“This was my first wedding,” he confesses.
“Mine, too,” Misty says.
Week 28
Misty and Logan arrive at Kenney’s office for her checkup.
She steps on the scale: 142 pounds.
In the darkened room, screens broadcast ultrasound images.
“They look a lot bigger,” Logan says nervously, clutching his baseball cap in his hand.
“They are a lot bigger. They are huge,” Misty says. “And they are so ready to come out.”
Nurse Jenny Flanders checks the weights. Baby A is 2 pounds, 3 ounces. Baby B is 2 pounds, 7 ounces. Baby C is 2 pounds, 5 ounces.
“Have you named them?” she asks.
Baby A is Nova Emily, as in supernova. “She exploded into three babies,” Misty explains.
Baby B is Scarlett Jean. “I just like that name. It sounds like it is from the 1920s.”
Baby C is Karma Isabella. “She was the last one to be found. She will bring us good karma.”
May 30 will mark week 30. Misty hopes Kenney will deliver the babies that day.
“I know you’re uncomfortable,” he tells her. But the longer the babies remain in the womb, the better off they will be.
“We’d like to get you to 32 weeks.”
Misty is miserable.
“I hurt all over,” she says. “My legs get like Jell-O, and I feel like they are going to give out.”
She can’t sleep. It seems as if one of the babies is always kicking another, turning, stretching, bouncing around. It’s hard to breathe, especially when she lies down. It hurts to walk.
“This is not going to kill her, is it?” Logan asks.
Flanders smiles.
“No … but I guess it depends on who you ask.”
Week 30
Misty is not happy.
“He told me at 32 weeks we would negotiate. Now he’s telling me 35 weeks,” she says.
She’s gained 3 pounds in seven days.
“In my head, it feels like I gain 10 pounds a day,” she says.
Her belly button has long disappeared. She has stretch marks on stretch marks. And she has a rash. She itches all over, especially on her bulging belly.
Kenney gives her medication for the rash and the pain.
“I don’t want to be pregnant with triplets anymore,” she tells him. “I love my babies, but …”
He empathizes but says he will not deliver this early unless there’s a medical emergency.
She’s glad she’s been able to carry the triplets this long.
“But I hope to have them soon, though.”
Week 31
Her feet look like water balloons. The itching is driving her crazy. She’s exhausted.
“I do squats every night. I go up and down the stairs every day. Nothing is working.”
It will be so much better after the babies are born, she thinks.
Then there is the reality.
Their family will double in size. They will have four children younger than 2.
“We don’t even have a car that will fit all of us,” Misty says during her June 10 visit to Kenney’s office. “We will have to make two trips just to bring them home from the hospital.”
The numbers are mind-boggling, Logan says.
Three cribs. Three infant seats. Three swings. Six socks. Six shoes. Thirty-six diapers a day. They read somewhere that triplets go through 10,000 diapers the first year. At $10 for a pack of 20, that’s $5,000, and that’s not counting Fianna.
Misty worries about Fianna.
“She’s so used to being the center of attention. It breaks my heart when I think about it.”
Kenney walks in. He tells Misty he will deliver the babies by Caesarean section at 7:30 a.m. on June 26.
Misty glows.
Standing at the counter to make her next appointment, she does a little dance.
“June 26,” she sings.
Week 32
The scale reads 150 pounds.
“Those babies grew,” nurse Flanders says. “The fact that you have gone this long is really good.”
“Nine da-ayss,” Misty says.
On the ultrasound table, they estimate weights: 4 pounds, 3 ounces, 4 pounds, 2 ounces, and 3 pounds, 6 ounces.
“Gee, I have 12 pounds of babies inside of me right now,” Misty marvels.
Just for the fun of it, they measure her belly — 43 inches around, 21 inches from top to bottom.
“Oh, God,” Misty groans.
Week 33
Contractions start on the evening of June 19. Logan tracks them on paper.
By 12:30 a.m., they head for Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center, where they give Misty morphine for the pain.
Minutes later, a monitor reveals the babies’ heartbeats have slowed.
“I didn’t know it would drug the babies,” she says, upset and worried.
Logan sleeps on a couch in the room. Misty can’t sleep. She stares at the machines, chews on ice and uses a plastic spoon handle to scratch her tummy.
Kenney and nurse Sherrie Young explain the procedure.
“I’m in the Top 3 for speed,” Kenney tells her.
“I have concerns,” Misty says. “Can you die from the bleeding?”
Kenney reassures her. “It’s pretty unusual in this hospital.”
Misty replies: “Oh, I don’t know, I have crazy luck.”
Delivery is set for 1 p.m. It’s 9 in the morning.
“I am so hungry,” Misty says.
“I would totally sneak you stuff if it wouldn’t kill you,” Logan says.
“Yeah, I don’t feel like choking on my vomit,” she jokes.
Her back aches. Logan massages it. Misty groans with relief.
When pediatrician Terra Bowers stops in, Misty asks again about the risks.
“Have you been watching the Discovery Channel again? I told you to stop doing that,” she says. “Everything will go just fine. If something comes up, we’ll deal with it.”
Says Misty: “It’s scary having babies.”
At 12:15 p.m., Misty is prepped for surgery. Logan changes into sterile scrubs, booties and a cap. They walk into Delivery Room No. 1. Misty sits on the table.
Bowers and Kenney scrub in. Three nurses line up, each holding a warmed receiving blanket.
Logan holds Misty’s hand and leans close.
At 1:27.17, Nova is born.
Scarlett comes at 1:27.42
Karma at 1:28.19.
Each baby gets her own room and her own team of doctors and nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit. They clear airways, weigh and measure the babies and test for reflexes.
Nova weighs 3 pounds, 11 ounces. Scarlett is 3 pounds, 10.2 ounces. Karma, 3 pounds, 7.5 ounces.
As is common with preemies, their lungs are not fully developed. They are placed on machines to help them breathe and given a drug to help their lungs develop.
Logan hurries in to see Nova get her first bath. He bends down and coos in her ear. “Hi there …”
He repeats this gentle introduction three times.
Are they all right? Be honest with me.
Neonatal Nurse Practitioner Lorri Niemeyer reassures him the girls are doing great. The first 48 hours are critical.
It’s June 24, and Misty is ready to go home. Before she leaves the hospital, NICU staff allow her and Logan hold and bottle feed their babies for the first time.
Doctors say the girls should be able to go home July 11.
“I am blessed,” Misty says. “I am not a religious person, but if anything could change my mind, it was this experience.”
She knows it won’t be easy.
“We’re strong,” she says. “But it is stressful to think about.”
Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.
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