The Temperino Family Story

In 2008, my wife Andrea and I were devastated to learn that we had a “zero percent chance” of conceiving a child.  After the initial shock and sadness, we decided not to give up and to see if there was some way we could beat the odds.  It would be an uphill battle since we had been told by not one but seven clinics that we could not conceive.  We needed a miracle.

After increasing frustration and several dead-ends, we made a life-changing decision to overhaul our lifestyle and go 100% organic/holistic.  We committed ourselves fully.  By 2010, we cautiously visited one more IVF specialist to see if our luck had changed.  It had, and with our commitment to holistic/organic living and the help of our 8th reproductive endocrinologist (!), we succeeded in conceiving our son Ayden through In Vitro Fertilization.  He was born on March 1, 2011.

In 2012, we decided to try our luck again and give Ayden a sibling.  Much to our amazement, it worked like a charm.  Three charms to be exact.  This time, my wife Andrea became pregnant with triplets!  Unfortunately, this pregnancy did not go as smoothly as the first one.  

Just weeks after finding out she was pregnant, Andrea began having strange and terrifying symptoms.  At one point her throat completely locked up while she was brushing her teeth (she described it as feeling like she was swallowing her tongue) and she went into a panic.  She continued to have trouble breathing, was unable to lay flat in bed and felt an odd sensation in her lips that came and went.  Her stomach pulsated in a motion that we originally thought was the babies’ heartbeats, but which we later came to find out was her accessory muscles compensating for her breathing.

After weeks of suffering and without a diagnosis, myself and her immediate family made the difficult decision to take her out of the Broward hospital ICU she was in and rush her to the emergency room at Jackson Memorial Hospital.  Her condition had worsened so much and her breathing had become so labored, she could barely make it to the car.

Within hours, doctors at Jackson determined that Andrea was suffering from a rare autoimmune disorder, Myasthenia Gravis with antibodies to muscle specific tyrosine kinase (MuSK), a condition that weakens the muscles and affects swallowing, speech and breathing.   We felt much better with a diagnosis and in the capable hands of the Jackson Memorial specialists, but despite their best efforts, she was still forced to spend eight days on a ventilator.  There were many close calls all due to this rare and aggressive disease that few had even heard of, much less treated.   Doctors believe Andrea is the first woman pregnant with triplets to be diagnosed with this condition in the United States and possibly the world.

When Andrea was stabilized again at Jackson, we had a brief respite of weeks at home, reconnecting with Ayden and preparing for the birth of these three babies that had already been through so much. On November 1, everything changed again. Andrea was at 30 weeks gestation when she woke up with severe abdominal pain. As a precaution, we went to Jackson to check it out, and it’s a good thing we did.  It turns out Andrea was experiencing a placental abruption.  She was now facing another rare and life-threatening pregnancy complication in which the placenta separates from its attachment to the wall of the uterus. That very day, doctors performed an emergency Cesarean Section on Andrea. All three baby boys – Ashton and identical twins Alexander and Austyn – were born within one minute.  Two boys weighed 2.5 pounds and one weighed 3 pounds.  All were admitted to the NICU at Holtz, where Alexander and Austyn remained until December 26 and Ashton remained until January 10, 2013.  When they came home, we celebrated Christmas in January with our Multiple Miracles.

Today, Andrea and the babies are doing great.  We look forward to watching our sons grow up!  We have so much to be thankful for.  We started the Multiple Miracles Foundation because we hope to share our story and bring hope to others suffering from male factor infertility or autoimmune diseases.  Certain things were critical to our success and we want to share those as we bring awareness to these important causes and provide a forum for discussion and advocacy.  We hope you enjoy our site and please contact us to give feedback or share your story!

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