WHEN Callie Woodard went for a scan to check surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy had been successful, she had a shock four times over.
Despite her having surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy growing in her womb - she was still pregnant.
But it wasn’t just with one baby - four little heartbeats were pumping away in her womb.
Callie, 36 from California, USA, then delivered her healthy quadruplets - after getting the shock of her life.
She said: "Doctors think that I was actually pregnant with five babies - and one had been in my fallopian tube, and the other four were in my womb.
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"But it had been such early days that the four other heartbeats hadn’t shown up on the scan.
"I’d gone from having surgery to remove the one baby, to being told that I was still pregnant with quads.
"It was such a shock, and it took a while to sink in."
Callie and her husband Gabriel, 38, had tried for one more baby to complete their family after she’d given birth to their daughter Ariella, now seven.
They started trying when Ariella was 18 months old, but nothing happened.
Fertility problems
The couple went to see a doctor, who carried out tests and told them the devastating news that Callie's egg quality was poor - like a pre-menopausal woman - and that she had such few eggs left she was unlikely to get pregnant.
"We were heartbroken," said Callie.
"But they gave me drugs to stimulate my ovaries, and amazingly, I fell pregnant."
An early scan showed the couple was pregnant with twins, and Callie went on to give birth to Noah and Samara in June 2019.
"We then decided that we wanted one more baby to make our family complete and went back to see the same doctor.
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"When I told him I’d had twins after he’d seen us last time, he was astounded.
"When we told him we wanted one more baby he had even more crushing news for us."
Callie's eggs were in an "even worse" condition than before, the doctor told the parents, and said the parents should not "hold out any hope."
He said the only way they stood a chance was to use a donor egg, which involves using eggs from another woman.
The couple had almost given up, but doctors decided to give Callie a different fertility drug on their eighth try, and amazingly, she found out she was pregnant.
"Gabriel and I were thrilled; we had done it without using donor eggs, and I was finally pregnant," she said. "We were over the moon."
Ectopic pregnancy fears
Within just a few weeks of her pregnancy, Callie started to get "stabbing pains" in her left side.
Doctors suspected she was experiencing an ectopic pregnancy, which happens when the embryo grows inside the fallopian tube.
"We were devastated; we’d thought that I was finally pregnant, but now we were being told that it was looking like it was an ectopic, which meant that it would have to be surgically removed."
The doctors did some scans, but her womb was empty.
Yet the tests showed that she was pregnant, which confirmed that it was an ectopic pregnancy.
"The pains were getting worse and worse," said Callie.
Doctors decided they had to perform emergency surgery to remove the ruptured fallopian tube, which doctors thought was causing the pain.
"The anaesthetist offered me a newer type of anaesthesia, which meant a better recovery time.
"But it would also be damaging to any pregnancy, unlike the older drugs.
"Give me the other type," I begged them.
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Callie Woodard
"They couldn’t understand it. ‘Why make it more difficult for yourself?’ They asked. ‘There isn’t any viable pregnancy there.’
"But I was adamant. There was something that was telling me I had to guard my womb, even though scans had shown it was empty."
After Callie was wheeled back up from the surgery, her hormone levels kept rising.
The surgeon called her in to say that in rare circumstances, the embryo can burst from the fallopian tube and latch on to yet another organ. So he needed another scan to check if that had happened.
Hours later, Callie found herself lying on the scanning table next to a screen, which showed four sacs growing inside her womb.
"The sonographer went very quiet and kept looking at me," the mum recalled.
"She then asked me if I had multiples in my family. I told her I wasn’t meant to be still pregnant.
"Only a few days ago I’d had surgery to remove a pregnancy that was growing in my fallopian tube outside my womb."
In shock, Callie called Gabriel to tell him the news that she was indeed pregnant.
"He didn’t believe me at first," she said, "And I don’t blame him.
"Who would ever have thought that I would have surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy and I’d been pregnant with another four babies all along."
As Callies bump grew she felt luckier each day that her babies had survived the surgery and were now growing healthily.
She said: "There was a risk of me haemorrhaging during the caesarian delivery because of the recent ectopic surgery, and I was so worried that I was going to leave all my babies without a mum."
But luckily, all four babies were born safely in June last year, Abigail weighing 3Ib4, Ezra at 3Ib10, Norah at 3Ib6, and Selah at 2Ib10.
"We brought them home to meet their other brothers and sisters, and our house is chaotic now but filled with love.
"We will eventually need to build a second storey on our house and hopefully will get a passenger van, too, to carry our brood around in.
"We feel like the luckiest family in the world."