Brittany Schneider was experiencing a wide range of emotions when she shared her final pregnancy update on TikTok.
In a matter of hours, the 34-year-old nurse in Lexington, Kentucky, and her husband, Theodore “Tee” Schneider, 48, would be welcoming triplets.
“I posted a video the morning of my C-section. It was something really special that I wanted to document,” Schneider tells TODAY.com, noting that it was the last time her son Crew, 3, would be an only child.
Schneider had her shirt raised in the now-viral clip, which has been seen more than 17 million times since it was posted on April 28.
“People were shocked by how big my belly was. I got comments like, ‘Your bump looks like a mansion,' 'How many babies are in there?’ and ‘No way is that real,’” Schneider says.
Other remarks included:
"She's giving birth to a grown up."
"babies got a penthouse."
"Bro is pregnant with the colossal titan."
Schneider says she wasn’t expecting such a big reaction.
“For me, I saw my stomach every day, and I got used to the way it looked,” she explains. “Now looking back at the video I’m like, ‘Yep. I was huge.’”
Schneider let the remarks roll off her back. She says she had a harder time with her body image when she was pregnant with her first child.
“From the start, I knew I was going to get very big with this pregnancy, and I wanted to embrace the experience. I didn’t want to be too hard on myself,” she says.
On April 28, the Schneiders welcomed identical twin daughters, Andee and Georgia, and son Theodore, whom they call Teddy. Teddy weighed 5 pounds, 7 ounces, Andee weighed 4 pounds, 3 ounces, and Georgia weighed 4 pounds 1 ounce.
The babies were conceived spontaneously without any reproductive assistance. Conceiving spontaneous triplets occurs 1 in every 10,000 pregnancies according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
Andee, Georgia and Teddy, who were born five and a half weeks early, are currently in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where they are working on feeding and growing.
“They’re doing so good,” Schneider says. “I’m so grateful.”
Schneider said she is also grateful to no longer be pregnant and has lost 37 pounds since giving birth.
“I was getting up every 45 minutes in the night to pee,” she says. “And I don’t miss people asking me when I’m due!”