Couple who first met during lockdown are now expecting identical triplets
A couple who met on a dating app during the first lockdown are now expecting identical triplets.
Megan Smyth, 31, and Clayton Whittaker, 41, met via the dating app Bumble in late May 2020, deciding to move in together just one month later.
They are now expecting identical triplets - an extremely rare natural conception which only occurs about 20 to 30 times per one million births.
“This is definitely not how I expected this year to go,” Smyth explains.
“At the start of 2020, I’d just broken up with my ex and had sworn off men, so never thought I’d be pregnant by the end of the year.
“If someone had said to me in January that I’d be pregnant with triplets, there’s no way I’d have believed it. It’s overwhelming.”
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After bonding on Bumble over their love of dogs, NHS project coordinator Smyth and excavation driver Whittaker decided to meet up just one week after their first message in May.
After taking a socially distanced walk around Whittaker’s hometown of Moorhouse, Nottinghamshire, the pair were instantly smitten.
With the threat of another lockdown in their minds, the couple took the plunge and decided to move in together in Smyth’s two bedroom home in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire.
“We haven't spent a day apart since the day we first met,” Smyth explains.
“We officially became a couple in June 2020 and Clayton moved in with me a couple of weeks later.”
Having been widowed in 2013, Smyth says she hadn’t done much dating until this year.
“I broke up with a boyfriend in January and met another one in March that didn't last very long,” she explains.
“With Clayton, it was just very different. We are pretty much the same person in that we view things in the same way.
“We're both very easy going. We just get along.
“I think you just know when it's easy to get along with someone,” she adds.
If moving in together after just a month wasn’t life changing enough, in August the couple also discovered that Smyth was pregnant.
“I did a test whilst Clayton was at work as I'm working from home,” Smyth reveals. “I tried to keep it a secret to tell him in some special way but I caved that night.”
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Both parents-to-be were thrilled about the news, but were shocked to learn at a scan in September that they weren’t expecting just one baby, but three.
“We came out into the waiting room and were looking at each other, absolutely gobsmacked,” explains Whittaker.
“We had no words to say to each other, it was just such a shock!.
“I was thinking poor Megan, she’s got to carry these three babies in her first pregnancy!”
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With the three babies due in April 2020, the couple are now preparing to welcome their identical triplets with the support of family and friends.
“Everyone is really excited for us,” Smyth says.
“I don't think I've ever met two more excited people than my mum and Clayton’s mum,” she adds. “They're constantly messaging me asking how the bump is.”
Whittaker says that though it was a shock to start with, the news that the couple are soon to welcome three babies is finally starting to sink in.
“It's quite a miracle for us,” he explains.
“I was very surprised when Megan said she was pregnant. I didn’t think that we would have a family that quickly but it’s happened and we’re happy about it. It’s a gift, really.”
Additional reporting SWNS.
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