American quadruplets, Alison, Brooke, Claire and Darcy were conceived without fertility drugs. Identical quads, they are the result of one egg splitting into four, one set of only 36 such sets of quads recorded.
Mother Sheila was 28 when they were born. She and her husband Al, age 30, already had two girls, ages 5 and 7 when she became pregnant with the quads in a “happy accident.”. She went into labor about a month before the due date, and without pain medication, delivered the four babies in about 17 minutes beginning at 11:21 PM. The total birth weight of the girls was 17.5 pounds and they were named alphabetically in order of their birth.
The quads were good natured babies, and the parents described them as follows: “Alison was quiet and good-natured. Brooke was sweet and patient about being fed. Claire needed more attention. And Darcy, though smallest, was the ringleader and the first to flip over.” With six kids in school, Al and Sheila had some trouble making ends meet and had a tiny house with the quad sharing a converted garage.
At age 15, the quads appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson and a year later in “To Tell the Truth” and “Live with Regis and Kathie Lee.” Each quad had separate friends and majored in different subjects in college, although in the end, Darcy, Claire and Alison majored in journalism while Brooke stayed with her business major. Claire especially was the individualist, deciding to study in London instead of spending junior year in The Netherlands with the other three.
They graduated from college in 1997. Darcy worked in London; Brooke studied German in Austria; Claire won a Fulbright scholarship to study journalism I Austria, and Alison won a scholarship to study journalism in Spain. Each one now has her own career and is unmarried, living near their parents.