I got pregnant with twins when I was already pregnant. I gave birth to superfetation triplets conceived one week apart.

• Deonna Fletcher found that two of her three daughters were conceived a week after the first.
• Doctors said that she had a superfetation, when you can become pregnant while pregnant.
• The condition is so rare there are no official medical records as to how often it occurs.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Deonna Fletcher. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My fiancée, Antonio Livington, had been wanting to have a baby for some time. When I saw the positive pregnancy test, it felt like everything had fallen into place.

I'd always have very irregular periods — sometimes as often as two a month. They were all over the place. I even had a period a few days after finding out I was pregnant. It wasn't a big deal.

I had a transvaginal ultrasound at around four weeks, which showed a single fetus in its sac. It showed that everything was OK with the baby.

Meanwhile, Antonio and I had been having a lot of sex since we found out I was pregnant in the spring of 2019. I figured that once I got really big, when I was further on in my pregnancy, I wouldn't want to have sex as it would be uncomfortable.

I thought I was having a miscarriage

I guess another factor was that, now I was pregnant, we could carry on having sex without using birth control. It was also a bit like having a celebration.

However, about two weeks after the scan, I got terrible pains in my lower abdomen. There was no blood, but I thought I might be having a miscarriage. The pain got so bad I went to the ER.

They did a second transvaginal ultrasound to see what was going on. To everyone's surprise, they found there were two more babies in my uterus. I was having triplets.

"How can that be possible?" I asked the person doing the sonogram. The previous scan had been very thorough. There'd been no doubt there was just one baby.

I told her about my unpredictable periods. "It looks like you ovulated twice," she said.

Antonio and I were shocked. There was a lot to process. We'd never heard of getting pregnant when you're already pregnant. But the doctors went on to confirm that it was a case of superfetation.

In extremely rare circumstances, they said, a second egg is fertilized and becomes implanted in the uterus days or weeks later than the first one. You basically get pregnant twice.

There were no official statistics on how often it happened. Only a handful of cases were recorded in medical literature, they said.

It turned out that the "younger" babies were identical twins. One of the fertilized eggs had divided. A specialist said that my pain early on was related to my uterus expanding so rapidly. It had needed to make room for three babies.

We named the girls Dream, Amani, and Amber

I was pretty nauseous for the first six months of the pregnancy. My waters broke early, and I was put on bed rest for nearly two months. It was actually quite nice to have a rest. I'm an influencer — as well as the owner of a hair salon — so I filmed some TikTok videos from the hospital.

I gave birth on January 18, 2020. I had a C-section. There was no way I was going to push three babies out.

We named the girls —Dream, Amani, and Amber. Dream, who was the first to be conceived, weighed three pounds. The twins, Amber and Amani, were three and four ounces heavier, respectively. The doctors believed the twins were conceived about six to eight days after Dream.

The triplets were in the NICU for more than a month. It was challenging. Thankfully, they're all perfectly healthy.

They were on a sleep schedule and were pretty easy on us. They were very well-behaved. Now they're 4, they are a bundle of energy. Our fourth child, Antonio Junior, was born in October last year. They love their brother very much and act like they're moms.

It's tiring, but it's fun. Still, Antonio, a photographer, and I are done in terms of having more kids. Three girls — two of whom were very unexpected — and a baby boy are more than enough.

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