Mother gives birth to two sets of identical twins

Mrs Kelly, 35, from Billingham, near Middlesbrough, gave birth to Heidi, Annabelle, Hannah and Jessica after conceiving them through IVF.

She and her husband Sean had tried a number of times to conceive a sibling for their eight-year-old son Cameron but turned to private treatment following unsuccessful attempts with the NHS.

The couple has spent ��9,000 trying to fall pregnant again. When they sought private treatment at the London Women's Clinic in Darlington, Mrs Kelly experienced a miscarriage on her first attempt, but it was the third attempt that proved successful.

Mrs Kelly, a nurse, explained that after Cameron was born by emergency Caesarean section, her natural cycle never returned.

"I went to my doctor a few times about it, but he said sometimes it took a while for everything to go back to normal," she told The Daily Mail. "When Cameron was about two, we really wanted to try for another baby.

"But you can't get pregnant if you're not ovulating, so that's when the worry set in for me. Over the next few years, the doctors investigated properly. They did all the tests, but found nothing to explain why everything had stopped."

The girls were born by caesarean section at the Victoria Royal Infirmary in Newcastle after her waters broke at 31.5 weeks. Had she not gone into labour, doctors would have induced her at 32 weeks on New Year's Eve.

Heidi and Annabelle each weighed 3lb 3oz, Hannah 2lb 11oz and Jessica 2lb 10oz.

"We've been through so much to have these babies," said Mrs Kelly. "We've suffered miscarriages and so many disappointments.

"When we heard we were expecting four, and that the risks to their health were so high with it being a multiple pregnancy, we didn't dare to imagine the day we'd see them all. But looking at them now, it seems real and totally fantastic."

Mr Kelly, 34, an electrical engineer, said: "The C-section was over in minutes, and they took them out so quickly they couldn't say for sure which baby was twinned with which.

"We won't know until we get blood test results when they are about ten weeks old, but for now we're assuming Heidi and Annabelle are twins because they weighed exactly the same and look alike, and Hannah and Jessica, the smaller two, are also twins."

Mr Kelly added: "We may lose some sleep. We may have to tighten our belts. We may not have a holiday for years.

"But when you look at those four healthy babies, you realise it's a small price to pay."

Parents undergoing IVF treatment are 20 times more likely to have a multiple pregnancy, with one in four resulting in twins, most of them being non-identical.

(Edit:Ruby)