When Gregory and Kisha Hill of Fort Worth welcomed triplets into the world on Feb. 12, little did they know they’d be part of a seeming boom in multiple births at their North Texas hospital.

Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth says it’s seeing a spike in the number of moms giving birth to multiple babies, with the frequency of twins and triplets outpacing last year’s totals.

Dr. Bannie Tabor, a high-risk obstetrician for Texas Health whose group delivered the majority of the twins and all the triplets, said he noted the unusually high number after delivering five sets of twins back to back.

“That’s what caught my eye. And I said, ‘Something is going on here,’” he said.

The hospital has already delivered seven sets of triplets in 2018 — the total it delivered last year — including the Hills' girls, Lena and Gemma, and son Gregory III.

So far, 23 sets of twins have been born this year at the facility, double the amount from January-February 2017.

Gregory Hill holds one of his newborn triplets, Lena, while wife Kisha tends to Gemma and Gregory at their home in Fort Worth on March 7, 2018. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

Despite the seeming uptick, however, Tabor notes that it’s too early to label the multiple baby births as a phenomenon. “It’s like baseball,” he said. “You don’t look at batting averages in April.”

It’s worth noting that the number of multiple births peaked in the United States around 2002.

Between the late 1980s and early 2000s, twin births in the U.S. nearly doubled, and the number of triplets and higher quadrupled, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That trend coincided with the introduction of fertility treatments, the federal agency says.

Multiple births are common with fertility treatments because it can be difficult to predict or control the number of eggs that are fertilized.

“There was a chance of it being twins or a single ... and it ended up being triplets,” said Kisha Hill, who underwent in-vitro fertilization to get pregnant. “It was a surprise, but we have a lot of support.”

Still, even that trend has slowed or reversed in recent years.

Nationwide, there were 3,755 sets of triplets and 131,723 sets of twins born in 2016. That’s compared with 6,118 sets of triplets and 137,085 sets of twins in 2006, CDC data shows.

“The trend in the past was more IVF and infertility. Now it’s a mix,” said Tabor, who has been in practice for more than 20 years.

Many of the moms who have delivered at Texas Health Fort Worth this year did not have fertility treatments, but the hospital could not provide the breakdown.

There could also be other reasons for the spike.

Tabor says his practice takes a large number of high-risk deliveries that are transferred from from smaller hospitals that don’t have the capacity to handle multiple births.

And there could be an impact from hospital closings and changes in service that have affected nearby areas and access.

Texas Health Resources' 11 North Texas hospitals delivered a total of 712 multiples last year.

The system is looking into whether any of its other facilities are also reporting an increase.