Brisbane lesbian couple expecting quints
by Marissa Calligeros — The Brisbane Times
 Photo credit: Woman's Day Australian lesbian couple Melissa Keevers and Rosemary Nolan are expecting quintuplets. |
A Brisbane lesbian couple expecting quintuplets has made international headlines.
Melissa Keevers, 27, and Rosemary Nolan, 21, are expecting five babies to be born around the end of this year. Although Ms Keevers was impregnated through artificial insemination, she did not undergo any hormone-based fertility treatment.
The chances of naturally conceiving quintuplets is less than one in 60 million.
The family made headlines in the UK's Daily Mail and Canada's Montreal Gazette, after speaking to Australia's Woman's Day magazine.
Ms Keevers told the magazine she was in shock for weeks after learning she was carrying five babies.
"During the scan the doctor asked us if we wanted the news, but as he looked pale, we were worried something was wrong," Ms Keevers said.
"He then told us he'd found five gestational sacs meaning, if all went well, we'd have five babies. We can't repeat what we said next.
"It took me a long time to get my head around what was happening. But now I've come to terms with it, I'm excited," the young mother said.
The couple used the same American sperm donor who had fathered their one-year-old daughter, Lilly.
Ms Nolan, who is from Ireland, met Ms Keevers while on holiday in Australia.
When Ms Keevers became pregnant with Lilly, the pair travelled to Ireland so that Ms Nolan could share the news with her family.
Ms Nolan said her father had feared he would not have any grandchildren.
"So I proved him wrong," Ms Nolan told Woman's Day.
"Two ladies and six babies."
The pair found the biological father, a 27-year-old US law student, through an internet fertility company based in America.
He has signed away any rights to the children and will never meet them.
Doctors estimate they will deliver the children at around 30 weeks' gestation, which falls at the end of December.
Australia's first recorded case of quintuplets was in 1967.
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