ROME, Oct 29: An Italian woman who will give birth twice within the space of three months has described her incredible ordeal as “a gift from God.”

Flavia D’Angelo, 20, will this month give birth to Denise, a baby girl. She will then have to return to hospital within the next three months to deliver three more babies — a girl and two boys.

If no complications arise, she could become the first woman ever to be pregnant for 12 months in a row.

Speaking about her double pregnancy for the first time, D’Angelo said in an interview broadcast live on national television on Sunday that she felt both “happy” and “scared”.

“I am scared, because I still don’t know how the deliveries will work,” D’Angelo said. “But this is undoubtedly a gift from God,” she later told reporters.

According to scientists, the case has only one precedent and was caused by the fact that the woman continued to ovulate after her first pregnancy. Conceiving three more babies was in itself described as a “one in two million event.”

“My first reaction was to burst out laughing, while she burst into tears and asked the doctor to take a closer look,” said Riccardo Tarquini, D’Angelo’s partner, when asked to describe their initial response to the news.

When the news hit the media, the couple took a holiday to hide from reporters. Now they plan to sell photographs of D’Angelo with a small baby and a pregnant belly to the press, the couple’s lawyer said. —dpa