GREELEY, Colo. — A mom unexpectedly went into labor two weeks ago and she began her delivery on her friend's front porch in Greeley.
“This is right where my water broke,” Tiffany Leonard said, pointing to an area along the sidewalk.
Leonard was just a few doors down from a friend's house when her labor started. It was 3 a.m. on April 18. It was 32 degrees outside and snowing. Leonard was alone, her phone was dead, and her car wasn’t working. That’s when she decided to walk to a friend’s house to get help.
“I just kind of laid back on his porch and banged on his door,” Leonard said. “Honestly, that's the rest of the energy that I had at all.”
“They're like, ‘Are you having a miscarriage?” I'm like, ‘No, no there's a baby in my pants right now as we're speaking to each other,’” said Leonard. “I didn't want to touch him. I didn't want to break him. He was super, super small.”
Greeley Police responded to the house to help Leonard. She gave birth to a baby boy named Burt who was 14 weeks early and he wasn’t alone.
“[The officer] was like, ‘How many are you expecting?’ And I said, ‘Triplets,’ and their eyes widened,” Leonard said.
Not long after that, Leonard gave birth to baby number two. She was then taken to the hospital to deliver the third child.
First-time father, Eric Mayeda, was both worried and excited when he got the call that Leonard was giving birth on their friend’s front porch.
“The nurse had told me the third one was born via C-section,” said Mayeda. “They were all alive. They were all breathing. They all had heartbeats.”
Burt, the oldest of the three, weighed 1.23 lbs. Billy Bob was next at 1.94 lbs. Then came Kikutaro, the youngest but biggest of them all, weighing a whopping 2.18 lbs.
“It looked like I could've picked up all three of them and just held all three of them in my two hands,” said Mayeda. “It was amazing to see that. There are no words to explain what that feels like, especially being a first-time father.”
All three boys are currently in the NICU at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora.
“They're doing good and they're striving,” said Leonard. “I'm glad. I'm really, really glad.”
Nearly every day, Leonard and Mayeda drive from their home in Greeley to Aurora to visit their boys. The trip is 70 miles there and 70 miles back. It’ll be several months until their baby boys get to come home.
The couple has set up a GoFundMe account to help pay for travel and hospital expenses. They’ve also set up a Facebook for the triplets to keep people updated on their progress.
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