- [Interviewer] So can you just talk about what life
looks like for you now with quadruplets?
You guys been to the circus?
Bye Bye!
Hello everybody, we're the Gardners.
And we have quadruplet three year old little girls.
So when Ashley and I got married,
we both knew that we wanted to have a big family.
I'm the oldest of 10, Ashley's the youngest of five
and when we decided to start trying to have children,
it was just part of a dream that we had envisioned.
We were patient in the beginning;
we didn't really worry to much about it.
We were young and we were still enjoying life.
Going into that first year of trying we started to
have some doubts and we were beginning to be frustrated.
So we decided to go to go to several different doctors
and we were just trying to figure out what was going on.
I kinda self diagnosed myself with endometriosis.
I had done some research and I pretty much knew that
I had all of these symptoms.
No one would believe me and so several years past
and we went to several different doctors
and they just said well we don't know why.
Just keep trying and it was super frustrating.
It was about six years in that we finally found
a doctor that agreed with me that I had endometriosis
and sent me to a surgeon who did a laparoscopy surgery.
That's the only way you can see if you have endometriosis
is if they go in physically and look at it.
When she went in for the surgery she predicted
that I probably had about a stage two endometriosis
and when she got out of the surgery she realized
I had a stage three borderline four endometriosis
and that means that basically I just have scar tissue all
over my reproductive organs which was keeping us
from getting pregnant.
- [Tyson] She cleaned out as much as she could
and gave us the best chances of getting pregnant
on our own at that point.
We tried for another year and we still didn't get pregnant
we started to look into adoption and I just had this
really strong gut feeling that I just needed to try
IVF one time.
Both of them are very expensive, time consuming,
a lot goes into that process and so you know making that
decision for us was one of the hardest decisions
that we had to make at that time.
You know a lot of infertility is not covered by insurance
and so we knew we were kind of on our own.
So we decided to go in and tell our doctor we were ready
to do IVF; we had saved up the money for it.
That is not an easy process to do at all.
It is very draining.
I mean you're giving yourself shots every single day.
It's extremely painful to go through.
We got through the process, but all of our eggs ended
up not making it except for the two
so they put the two back and we waited.
He gave us a 40 percent chance of having one baby.
Those were the odds that they gave us
so I mean that was a very very emotional and tough day
for both of us.
If this didn't work we were just gonna go onto adoption
which was gonna be great.
During that time we had a lot of fears and doubts
that were starting to creep in.
That we were just gonna have one and I wanted to have
twins at least; I was praying for twins.
We go in for the ultrasound and she starts looking
and she immediately sees two sacks and she goes
oh you guys have twins. We were ecstatic.
Oh my gosh, twins that's amazing.
We were so pumped. And she goes,
wait hold on a second.
She keeps getting closer and closer to the screen
and I looked at Tyson and honestly my first thought was
oh my gosh like one or both of them don't have
heartbeats and it felt like an eternity before she
finally was like there's four in there.
And I was like oh my gosh is this real life?
I mean I'd never known anybody who had
had quadruplets before.
I was so excited because this was it for us
and like we're gonna get our whole family
but is my body able to do this?
Are the babies gonna be okay?
Honestly coming outta that ultrasound like
we didn't even know which way to turn.
This was something I mean so unexpected.
Luckily for us both of our families live close.
Our brothers, our sisters are here, our parents
and we relied on them heavily.
The pregnancy just kinda was a whirlwind from there.
You don't really have time to sit back and enjoy the moment
of geez we're having quadruplets let's think
about this for a minute.
I mean you just go go go go go.
The doctors wanna see you every week.
It is a high risk pregnancy and they wanna check
and look at those babies as much as they can.
Everything had looked great and all the babies
were growing perfectly; their heartbeats were perfect,
everything was great.
I went in at 20 weeks for an appointment
and everything went completely the opposite direction.
They had been watching for something called TTTS
which is twin to twin transfusion syndrome.
When TTTS happens it means that their blood vessels
have fused together and they're sharing nutrition,
which is fine as long as they keep sharing it
back and forth and Esme had given all of the nutrients
to Indie and Indie wasn't passing any of it back.
So this means that Indie had a ton of fluid around her
to the point where her heart was beating overtime
and she was about to go into heart failure.
And Esme you couldn't even see her individual sack
that she was in; it was suctioned cupped to her body
and they couldn't find a bladder on her so she was
technically starving to death.
We found out that day that there are incredible doctors
who do these life saving fetal surgeries.
No one in Utah did it so we had to fly to LA
to get a surgery from an incredible doctor there.
He drained a liter of fluid off of Indie's sac
which was a ton for a little tiny baby.
They use a laser and they separate the blood vessels.
So this surgery was either going to work and it was
going to save all of these babies lives
or it was gonna cause so much trauma that I was going
to just deliver and we would have lost them all.
And there was just a 50 50 chance and we just had to
go with it and go with our faith
and prayer that everything was gonna be okay.
They did the surgery, we waited 24 hours.
We went and did another ultrasound and all four
of these little miracle babies had survived
that very traumatic surgery and we flew back home
and I was on bedrest from then until I delivered.
So an average day for us is the girls wake up about
eight o'clock and we wake up, we bring them downstairs,
we cook 'em all breakfast, and you try and get two year olds
to eat which they don't.
Me as a paranoid mom, I'm always running around with
like snacks and fruit and just eat something.
We usually try to do an activity in the morning
whether it's a park or-- Yeah we go out.
Taking them on a little shopping trip
to where they can get out, run their energy out.
So yeah that's what we do and then we come home,
we eat lunch and the girls go down for a nap still.
We are lucky with that; not all two year olds almost
three year olds nap.
That's when me and Tyson work.
Then they wake up and we just play and do dinner
and then play more, do bath time, and then it's off to bed
and then me and dad work again.
You know when the babies were born it was just
such a miracle and honestly in think God just looked out for
us; He blessed us every step of the way.
He really did I mean every doctor we've come in contact
with has said-- You're girls
shouldn't be this healthy. They shouldn't be
this healthy or you know some of them shouldn't even have
been here; they truly are miracles and they
have a purpose for being here because they have
defied every odd that was thrown at them.
I mean when they were born, Indie was my smallest
and she got down to one pound six ounces.
She just fit in the palm of your hand.
They were so strong and we had incredible doctors
and staff.
For those of you guys who are still struggling
with infertility, there are definitely times
when you don't think it's going to end
and there's definitely times when you lose your faith.
Just keep putting one foot in front of the other
and take it one step at a time.
You just have to remember that everything is going to be
okay and you're story is going to be beautiful
just for you and it's going to turn out the exact way
that it is supposed to for you.
Alright so these are our quadruplet daughters
and as you can see, sometimes you have to bribe 'em
a little bit.
Charlotte look what dad's got.
You gotta get on your horse, show me how you rock.
Yeah. Good job!
(light upbeat music)