The wife of the couple entering looks cheerful, the husband does not. They are there for the first ultrasound of this pregnancy. "Yes, we are having a third," she opens the conversation as she shakes my hand. "We have an eight-year-old boy and a 10-year-old boy," he says. "I didn't really want any more, but she wanted it that way." His head adjusts as he sees his wife smiling blissfully. She lies down on the bed. I prepare my ultrasound machine for the right transducer, ready for a term ultrasound. He takes her hand.

I have already made it nice and warm," I say, as I apply the gel her belly. I then set the transducer there and look for the right images. On a screen above the bed, the couple watches. I see a pouch and a heart, shift slightly and see another pouch and a heart and a little further on another. Three beating hearts. Spontaneous triplets.

I look at the man and the woman. "Is everything all right?" she asks. "Hold on tight. You're having triplets." "What? I think you're joking." "No, I'm really not joking." I show them the three hearts. "But that's not possible at all," he says. "We have a tiny two-door car and a tiny three-bedroom flat, and what on earth are we supposed to have a pram for?"

He gets up and walks to the door. "I need to go to the toilet." His wife stays down and stares at the screen. She giggles with nerves. Together, we watch the images again. After five minutes, the man is still not back, after 10 minutes still not back. After fifteen minutes, I decide to poll at the door. I knock on the door and ask, "Sir, are you OK?"

"Yes, I'll be right there," it sounds after a while, Only after encouraging him for half an hour do I, with the assistant, manage to talk him out. I offer him a cup of coffee, which he eagerly accepts. With his head down he walks into the treatment room, "We didn't expect that, did we dear?" says the wife encouragingly to her husband. "How can that be?" he replies, still in despair.

Being triplets, the pregnancy will continue to be monitored by a gynaecologist at the hospital. Some time after the triplets are born, I meet the woman in the supermarket, at the nappies and baby gear shelf. She has three neatly groomed babies in a special pram. "Found on Marktplaats," she says with a smile, tapping the pram. I admire the pram and the children intently. She beckons to me and then whispers, smiling, "No worries. There's a knot in it. My husband has gotten help."