Double the pleasure, triple the fun

When Adriana Arnold, a Parker resident, received her first pregnancy ultrasound at Parker Adventist Hospital, the technician asked if twins ran in her family. The answer was yes, but triplets did as well.

"I start freaking out," Brazilian native Arnold said, when the doctor told her the ultrasound revealed three beating hearts.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of twin births increased 74 percent, and the number of higher-order multiples, twins, triplets, quadruplets, or more, increased five-fold from 1980 to 2000.

Dixie Weber, clinical manger of the neonatal intensive care unit at Parker Adventist, said a lot of multiple births are contributed to upgraded technology and advanced infertility treatments.

"Moms are also older in the area, professionals, and are waiting longer to have children," Weber said.

Rocky Mountain Fertility Center physician, Deborah Smith said 99 percent of the patients she sees are there for fertility treatment. Smith said they work with approximately 10 to 12 patients a day.

According to the "pregnancy bible" author Heidi Murkoff, famous for her "What to expect when you are expecting" series, "multiples are multiplying."

"The number of parents seeing double in the birthing room is up 50 percent," Murkoff said. "And the number seeing triple or more is up 400 percent."

In her fourth edition of her series, Murkoff has increased chapters on helping parents with the challenges of multiple babies.

Highlands Ranch resident Alexandra, "Xan" Gregory, mom of twins Andy and Allie, born on Nov. 18, 2009 at Sky Ridge Medical Center, went through the process of in vitro fertilization, or IVF.

IVF is the process of fertilization by manually combining an egg and sperm in a laboratory dish. When the IVF procedure is successful, the process is combined with a procedure known as embryo transfer, which is used to physically place the embryo in the uterus.