When Selina and Kevin first met, they never imagined their story would be filled with years of waiting, heartbreak, and the kind of miracle that sounds too wild to be true. For seven long years, they endured a string of negative pregnancy tests, each one a small dagger to the hope they carried in their hearts. Doctors were blunt, telling Selina her polycystic ovaries and endometriosis meant she probably would never conceive naturally. There was even talk of early menopause, which felt like a cruel door slamming shut before she had even stepped inside the life she dreamed of. Still, they kept going. They wanted a family so badly, they were willing to weather every storm to get there.
IVF became their lifeline, though it was far from easy. At first, it worked. After treatment at Wessex Fertility, their daughter, Myla was born in 2014, and she became their shining star. Selina says she felt like the luckiest woman alive when she held her. But as Myla grew, their longing for another child grew too. They tried again, using the last of their frozen embryos, pouring savings into what they hoped would be Myla’s sibling. Instead, disappointment followed. Failed cycles, empty cribs, the quiet ache of watching everyone else’s families grow while theirs remained the same. At one point, they even considered adoption. IVF had taken such a toll on their bodies and spirits that life itself felt like it was on pause.
Finally, they decided to try one last time with two embryos left. Selina begged doctors to place both, knowing the risks but desperate for a chance. “We’d be fine with twins,” she thought, since both their families had twins in their bloodline. She never expected to be told she was carrying not one, not two, but four. At first, she didn’t believe it. She had been bleeding heavily and feared she’d lost the pregnancy, so when a colleague scanned her and saw four sacs, she thought it was some kind of cruel mistake. Even Kev thought she was joking until paperwork was shoved in his hands. Two weeks later, an official scan revealed four tiny heartbeats, steady and strong.
Joy quickly collided with fear. Specialists urged them to terminate the triplet boys, warning the risks were too high, the chances too slim. They painted grim pictures, laid out statistics like heavy stones, and pressed hard for them to make an impossible choice. But Selina and Kevin had already been through so much, and they couldn’t bring themselves to end those tiny lives. They chose hope, even if it was reckless, even if people thought they were foolish. “We decided to give our babies a fighting chance,” she said simply. It was not a decision made without fear, but it was made with love.
The pregnancy was grueling. Imagine being five-foot-two and measuring nearly four-foot-eight around the middle. She needed help just to get out of the bath. At every scan she worried, sometimes even fainted from the strain. But as the weeks passed, the babies held on. Against the odds, her body carried them to 29 weeks before labor came crashing in. On July 23, 2017, the quadruplets were born: Roman, Austin, Arlo, and Raeya. Tiny but mighty, they each weighed under three pounds, and though they needed time in the neonatal unit, they were alive, fighting, proving the experts wrong.
There were bumps along the road. Austin had a small hole in his heart and a nostril that didn’t form properly, but nothing compared to the dire warnings they had been given. One by one, the babies came home. Arlo first, then Raeya, and finally Roman and Austin. Their home, once quiet, was now bursting with cries, bottles, and the kind of chaos most parents can barely imagine. A doctor joked that Kev had better odds of winning the lottery than having quadruplets, but Selina says she already feels like they won something far better than money.
Now, when she looks around at her five children, she feels the weight of all those years of pain—but she also feels the beauty of having walked through them. Every negative test, every failed cycle, every tear was part of the path that led here. “I always longed for a big family but had accepted it wouldn’t happen,” she says. Yet here they are, outnumbered by five, living proof that miracles don’t just happen in stories, they happen in ordinary homes to people who refuse to give up.
