Australian Woman Gives Birth to Rare Identical Quadruplets

Jenitar Na'amoana, 34, and her husband Jortham welcomed four identical quadruplet daughters—Emily, Harriet, Catherine, and Alexa—via cesarean section on July 14 at Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital in Queensland. The pregnancy, described as a one-in-15-million occurrence, involved a single fertilized egg splitting into four embryos, all sharing 100% of their DNA and a single placenta. The babies were delivered at 28 weeks and are currently in the neonatal intensive care unit, doing "extremely well," according to Dr. Alexa Bendall, the fetal medicine specialist who oversaw the pregnancy. Na'amoana and her husband already had four children, ages 1 to 10, making their family size double overnight. The rarity of the birth is underscored by the fact that there were only 144 quadruplet and higher-order births in the United States in 2024, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Na'amoanas did not use fertility treatments, making the pregnancy a spontaneous occurrence. Dr. Bendall emphasized the unprecedented nature of the case, stating that the hospital had never seen a naturally conceived identical quadruplet pregnancy before. The family has received support and advice from Jenny Marr, who gave birth to identical quadruplets in 2020, emphasizing the importance of sleep schedules and self-care for the new parents.