Brooke Martin raised a pair of twins with her husband, but after 20 years, an unexpected message changed her life forever when she learned she was also the mother of triplets.
Brooke Martin, now 56, always wanted to be a mother, but the road to get there proved to be more difficult than expected. Brook underwent surgery to open her blocked fallopian tubes and then got pregnant, but unfortunately it was an ectopic pregnancy in one of the fallopian tubes.
After that, Brooke and her husband, Chris, decided to try alternative methods instead and decided on in vitro fertilization. In the first round, two embryos were implanted, and soon their twin sons were born – now 22-year-old Christopher and Matthew.
The clinic later asked the woman what she wanted to do with the remaining eight embryos, and since Brooke and Chris felt their family was complete but wanted to give them a chance at life, they donated the fertilized embryos. Although they could not know what happened next, they often thought about this question.
“I was 34 when the twins were born, so I didn’t want another eight babies. When it comes to IVF treatment, not just one embryo is implanted, but at least two. So the idea that we could have more twins, or maybe even triplets, was unimaginable. Even before the first IVF treatment, we knew we only wanted to do it once,” explained Brooke.
Brooke and Chris could decide whether to use the embryos, let them thaw, possibly donate them to science, or donate them to couples who want a baby. In the end, they decided on the latter to give the embryos a chance to live.
“When you go through things like that, you have a whole new perspective on embryos. As a mother, I couldn’t imagine not giving them a chance at life,” said Brooke, adding that she and her husband often wondered whether their children were “born” over the years.
After 19 years, nine months, and seven days, the parents finally got an answer to this question. Brooke’s cousin Tod received a message on a family tree site in which a stranger wrote that they were related and said something about a donated embryo. The message piqued Brooke’s interest, and she contacted a young man named Thomas Monroe, who was soon revealed to be her son.
When she found Thomas on Facebook, she was immediately sure that he was really their son. “He looked like a combination of my two sons, and he looked a lot like my brother,” she said.
“We started talking by e-mail, and in the third e-mail, he told me that he has two brothers, that is, triplets,” the mother said. “That was the best moment.”
Brooke and Chris didn’t have high hopes for it at first, because they definitely didn’t want to upset another family’s life. “At first, we were concerned about the relationship between their parents and us because we didn’t want to cross any lines,” Brooke said, adding that they were naturally very curious about their children nonetheless.
They then contacted the triplets’ father, Trey, and soon learned that their mother, Becky, had passed away a year earlier, so, to their greatest regret, they could no longer get to know her. However, they were soon able to meet the 20-year-old triplets, Thomas, Peter and Lauren.
Thomas began dating Brooke in January 2021, and Christopher, who married that summer, invited his siblings to his wedding. Lauren and Thomas also attended the ceremony and got along great.
The entire family finally met for the first time in the summer of 2022 and has been in regular contact ever since, which isn’t always easy since the kids live in different states in the US.
Twins and triplets also develop a strong bond. “My boys [the twins] have been great, they’ve just accepted the situation and been amazing,” Brooke said.
“The definition of family is now completely new, that’s for sure. There’s no rulebook, I think we write the rules as we go,” explained Brooke, who is also writing a book about their unusual experiences.
Source: babieshealthus.com
