Sisters Gina Purcell, Nina Rawlings-Tran and Victoria Brown are all expecting babies between July and November of this year
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.
Gina Purcell tells PEOPLE that she and her two sisters, Nina Rawlings-Tran and Victoria Brown, are all thrilled to welcome babies by the end 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.
“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 leaned 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.”
Around Thanksgiving 2020, Brown, the youngest of the sisters, announced to her family that she was expecting her second child with her husband Daniel, according to Fox News.
A month later, Rawlings-Tran had good news too: she was also pregnant after trying with her husband Paul for over a year, the outlet reported.
With two out of the three sisters now pregnant, Rawlings-Tran told Fox News that she and Brown, who both live in Irvine, started encouraging Purcell to try again for another baby.
“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.
According to Purcell, Brown 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.
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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.
Added Rawlings-Tran to Fox News: “We shared everything before. But now that we have this — because being pregnant in itself is a blessing. So, being able to share this with your best friends is just surreal.”