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Bitzel, Fear overcome odds with naturally occurring quad sons

Amie Bitzel (left) and Mike Fear, of Huntington, hold one of their quadruplet sons, born on Feb. 10. The babies are a rare set of naturally conceived quads.
Amie Bitzel (left) and Mike Fear, of Huntington, hold one of their quadruplet sons, born on Feb. 10. The babies are a rare set of naturally conceived quads. Photos provided.

Originally published March 12, 2015.

Four baby boys, each with his own personality.

Two parents, both still coming to terms with their new lives.

And the miniscule odds that brought them all together.

Amie Gressley Bitzel and Mike Fear beat those odds, becoming the parents of four sons — naturally occurring quadruplets — on Feb. 10.

The babies — Braxton Carter, Carson John, Mason Riley and Austin Shane — remain in an area hospital and are expected to come home to Huntington sometime this month. They’re doing better than expected, their mom says.

The boys are all fraternal, meaning each one developed separately.

The chances of anyone giving birth to naturally occurring quadruplets, conceived without the aid of fertility treatments, is “one in like 600-some-thousand,” Bitzel says.

“It’s really rare,” Fear adds.

Not only were Bitzel and Fear not using fertility treatments, they were using birth control — and ended up with four babies, anyway.

The couple found out about the quads in September, when the pregnancy was just six weeks along. Bitzel, 34, had previously had three miscarriages, so her doctor ordered an early scan. Fear was with her as the technician performed the scan.

“She was really quiet, and then she said, ‘There’s four in there,’” Bitzel remembers.

“I was terrified.”

“She cried,” says Fear, 31. “I was still looking at the screen. I saw four dots. I said, ‘Wait a minute; it can’t be.”’

“We’re as happy as can be now, though,” Bitzel says.

The Mothers of Supertwins website pegs the chances of spontaneously conceiving fraternal quadruplets at one in 571,787 pregnancies.
The chances of spontaneously conceiving four identical quadruplets is even higher — one in 15,625,000 pregnancies.

Bitzel says her doctor in Huntington immediately sent her to a perinatologist in Fort Wayne, Dr. Thomas Wheeler, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies.

Wheeler told Bitzel and Fear that theirs was the fifth set of quadruplets he’s delivered in his 26 years of practice, and the only set to have been conceived spontaneously. The first four sets were conceived with the help of fertility treatments.

“I was the only one that was natural, and I got them the farthest,” Bitzel says.

There are twins in both Bitzel’s family and Fear’s family, “but no more than twins,” Bitzel says.
Wheeler initially offered them the chance to reduce the number of babies she was carrying, but Fear and Bitzel said no.

“There’s no way you can pick and choose,” she says. “Four’s in there, four’s staying in there.”

“If there’s four there, it’s meant to be,” Fear says. “Hey, I can’t kill one of my kids.”

Fear was concerned about Bitzel’s health being affected by the multiple pregnancy, and she did have some complications.

She couldn’t keep food down and her blood pressure was high, so her doctor put her on modified bed rest starting in October. Short trips to the store were OK, but she had to leave her job at Arrow Electronics, located inside the UTEC building in Huntington.

“He didn’t want me on my feet at work eight hours a day,” she explains.
And, for four months, she didn’t get much sleep.

“I would toss and turn all night,” she says. Even sleeping in a recliner didn’t help much.

She became anemic near the end of the pregnancy. When the babies were delivered by C-section, she needed a blood transfusion.
“I was out of it after the C-section,” she says. “I can’t remember anything from that day.”

Bitzel gained 60 pounds during the pregnancy.

“But it was all in my belly,” she points out.

Bitzel says she could tell the babies apart even before they were born, something Fear admits to having difficulty with even a month after their birth.

“She had pains in her back,” Fear says. “It was Mason kicking her in the back.”

“Carson moved the most,” Bitzel says. “Austin got my ribs. Braxton was always on my bladder.”

The week before the babies were born, Bitzel was given steroid shots and started feeling uncomfortable. The doctor put her in the hospital for what was supposed to be three weeks of bed rest. Her liver was enlarged, her enzymes and her blood pressure were both high.

Her doctor decided to deliver the babies the next day, Feb. 10.

“They all came out breathing and crying on their own,” she says.

Four babies were born within two minutes, weighing 2 pounds, 4 ounces; 2 pounds, 15 ounces; 3 pounds, 3 ounces; and 3 pounds, 5 ounces.

“The smallest, they were all sitting on,” Bitzel says.

The babies were born 10 weeks early. A full-term due date would have been April 22.

All four were put on oxygen immediately after birth; a month later, two have been taken off the oxygen.

Fear and Bitzel didn’t get to hold the babies until a week after they were born.

“That was hard, not getting to hold them,” Bitzel says.

The boys were still tiny — and connected to all kinds of tubes — when Bitzel and Fear were allowed to take them in their arms.

“Oh, my. I was scared to hold them at first,” Fear says. “It felt like a little baby doll. It didn’t have no weight to it at all.
“But now, they’re kind of filled out a little bit.”

The smallest baby gained almost 13 ounces in a month, and the largest is up to 4 pounds, 1 ounce. Each baby will be sent home when he weighs 4.5 pounds and has taken a bottle four two days, meaning they all won’t go home at the same time. The boys currently have feeding tubes.

Two of the boys, Austin and Braxton — the two who were the biggest at birth — have small heart murmurs that doctors plan to monitor but don’t expect to cause any problems, Bitzel says.

The boys’ names, the parents explain, were selected to end in “N” to match the names of Bitzel’s two older sons — Trenton, 16, and Holden, 8.

John, Carson’s middle name, is the same as both of his grandfathers’ middle names. And Shane, Austin’s middle name, is also Fear’s middle name.

Bitzel says she has no problems telling the boys apart.

“One looks like his dad, one looks like me and two of them have both our features,” she says.

Fear, though, says he’s still reading the names on their hospital cribs.

Bitzel was hospitalized for five days after the birth. Since her release, she’s been spending most of her time at the hospital.

“I usually read them a book every night,” she says. “It just calms them down.”

“They already know our voices,” says Fear. He works at GPP, in Wabash, and spends most of his non-working time with Bitzel at the hospital.

Bitzel’s older sons haven’t yet been able to interact with their new brothers in person.

“All they get to do is Facetime with them,” Bitzel says.

While the 16-year-old is a little concerned that he’ll have to change diapers or that the babies will keep him up at night, the 8-year-old is anxious to get his brothers home, Bitzel says.

“He says he’s going to protect the littlest one, since his brothers were picking on him before they were born,” she says.

Once the babies come home, Fear plans to take two weeks off to help them get settled in. Bitzel says her mom lives nearby and Fear’s mom is in Marion, and both will be available to help out.

Bitzel’s two older sons live with them on alternating weeks, and Fear has a 9-year-old son who is with them every other weekend. They all fit into a three-bedroom house in Huntington, a house that will soon see the addition of four more boys.

“Luckily, we have a den that we can use as a bedroom,” Fear says.

Their mode of transportation, though, is going to need some updating.

They now have one car that will carry two adults and two car seats, and Fear is pondering vehicles with third row seats.

Friends and family members held a baby shower recently and set the couple up with cribs and other supplies. They’ve also set up a GoFundMe account — Amie B & Mike F natural quads (www.gofundme.com/n66i2s) — for anyone who wants to help out.

The couple say Bitzel probably won’t go back to work.

“Day care would cost more than I make,” Bitzel says, and neither grandmother is up to the challenge of taking care of four babies at once.

And Fear figures there won’t be many evenings out or family vacations for a while.

“It’s going to be hard,” he says.

Bitzel is expecting an active household.

“They’ll probably be into sports,” she says. “Their brothers, they like sports.”

Fear has no predictions.

“They’ll be whatever they want to be,” he says.