A set of California triplets have always shared a tight bond, but now they’re taking their sisterhood one step further as they all experience pregnancy together.
Sisters Gina Purcell, Nina Rawlings-Tran and Victoria Brown are all expecting babies between July and November of this year. When the little ones make their arrivals this summer and in the late fall, it will be Rawlings-Tran’s first child, Brown’s second, and Purcell’s third. Gina, Nina, and Victoria will deliver a trio of babies over the next four months — two boys and a girl. According to Gina, Victoria will be up first, with a due date for her baby boy scheduled for July 9. Rawlings-Tran will follow and expects to welcome her first child, a boy, on Aug. 28. Lastly, Purcell is expected to welcome her third child, a daughter, on Nov. 25.
“I’m actually the oldest by four minutes and I’m having a girl and her name is Leighton Grace,” Gina said.
“I was the last to get pregnant so when I announced it at Easter dinner, my sisters started screaming and crying right away,” Purcell, 35, recalls. “My mom kept saying ‘No way, no way! What?! Are you serious?'”
“We were over the moon and so excited because we really didn’t think it would ever happen,” Purcell adds of being pregnant beside her sisters, who were all born four minutes apart.
Purcell’s disbelief over the pregnancy stems, in part, back to a miscarriage she suffered a few years ago, according to Fox News, which first reported news of the sisters’ pregnancies.
At the time, Purcell and her husband Paul, who live in Foothill Ranch, already had two children, and the devastating miscarriage caused them to stop trying for more, the outlet reported.
“With my miscarriage, we learned a lot on our faith in God and that’s what got us through,” says Purcell, the eldest of the sisters. “We’ve always talked about having a third baby but just didn’t think it was in the plan for us.”
According to Fox News, Brown, the youngest of the sisters, informed her family around Thanksgiving 2020 that she and her husband Daniel were expecting their second child.
Rawlings-Tran had happy news a month later as well: she was pregnant after a year of trying with her husband Paul, according to the publication.
With two of the three sisters now pregnant, Rawlings-Tran and Brown, who also resides in Irvine, encouraged Purcell to try for another child, according to Fox News.
“Since it’s her third one, she was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I’m not sure, the kids are a little bit older,'” recalled Rawlings-Tran. “Then they ended up trying and got pregnant. So it’s super fun, super lucky.”
Adds Purcell to PEOPLE: “This pregnancy has been a huge blessing. At first, I was super nervous of course to even tell anyone, but as time went on and we passed all the prenatal tests, I’m now able to enjoy it more… And when this happened so easily and quickly, we knew it was worth the wait, especially to experience it with my sisters.”
Throughout their pregnancies, Purcell says “it’s been incredible” to have her sisters to lean on.
Looking ahead to the future, Purcell says she is excited to “go on trips and outings together.”
Above all, she most looks forward to watching them become “best friends” and developing a close-knit bond, just as the three sisters have done.
“It’s different to have cousins the same age versus years apart because these three will have a special bond like my sisters and I do,” Purcell says.
They will all deliver their children at The Women’s Hospital at Memorial Care Saddleback Medical in Laguna Hills with OBGYN Dr. Daniel Sternfeld, CBS LA reports.
“The interesting thing is they had prenatal appointments all in the same day, so it clicked with me that this is a wonderful story of these three sisters who are all pregnant and having babies at the same time.”
