Thanks to modern medical advances, more multiple-child pregnancies are able to happen. However, the rates of twins and triplets is still fairly rare. That is, except at one school that seems to have more than it’s share.
In Ida, Michigan there must be something in the water. The 580-student elementary school has become an oddity with 16 sets of twins, and 2 sets of triplets, among it’s ranks. And more are coming soon. The school’s speech therapist and a fifth-grade teacher are both currently pregnant with twins. The odds of this many multiples happening in one area is extremely rare.
Kim Wegener, the principle of Whiteford Elementary, has some experience with this phenomenon. Wegener has a set of twins in second-grade at the Ida school. She is also a twin herself, as was her mother. Wegener feels that with the advances in fertilities treatments, the rates of twins and triplets is certain to increase. However, not every parent of multiples at Ida used medical means to become pregnant.
Carol and Jerry Herkimer and their neighbors, Jennifer and Greg Muir, have sets of triplets in the Ida school. Carol Herkimer was was shocked to find herself pregnant with triplets naturally. “I was really impressed to have identical triplets without taking any fertility drugs,” she said.
Herkimer is a member of the Monroe County Mother of Multiples, a local organization that connects parents of multiples together. The group is thriving in Ida, and only seems to be getting bigger. “It seems everyone is connected to a set of multiples,” Herkimer says.
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