Doctors at Tuyên Quang General Hospital take care of the three identical triplets born last Monday. — Photo vietnamnet.vn

TUYÊN QUANG — A 29-year-old woman from the northern province of Tuyên Quang last Monday gave birth to identical triplets, the odds of which can be up to one to 200 million, according to experts.

Online newspaper vietnamnet.vn  reported that the three baby boys were delivered at 35 weeks by C-section at the Tuyên Quang Province General Hospital. They weighed 2.1 kg, 2 kg and 1.7 kg. The mother is in good condition.

Phạm Thị Lan Hương, head of the hospital’s Maternity Department, said the mother had to undergo a C-section after arriving at the hospital with a stomach ache, a rupture of membranes, and with two of the three fetuses in the breech position (with the head up instead of down in the woman's pelvis). 

The mother had previously had two other C-sections in 2009 and 2012, giving birth to two girls.

The mother told Vietnamnet.vn that because she and her husband had two children, they were concerned about having triplets but decided to give birth after consultations with doctors in Hà Nội. During the pregnancy of 35 weeks, the woman gained 11 kilogrammes.

According to doctors, non-identical triplets occur around one in every 4,000 naturally conceived pregnancies, but identical triplets are very rare.  

The odds of naturally conceiving identical triplets, where a single fertilized egg is divided into three separate embryos, may be from 1 in 60,000 to 200 million, according to experts.

In late 2016, a woman in Hà Nội also gave birth to identical male triplets at 36 weeks by C-section. The three boys are all in good health. — VNS