A Nurse Witnessed A Teen Mom Give Birth To Triplets And Knew She Had To Step In

Shariya was only 14 years old in 2020 when she found out over a fateful Mother’s Day weekend that she, in fact, would soon be a mom. Naturally, the young girl was terrified and didn’t feel ready for such responsibility. As she later admitted to People magazine, “I was like, ‘I don’t want to be a mom right now.’” On August 3, though, her fears would ratchet up several notches.

You see, this was the day Shariya went for her first ultrasound; there she was told, to her astonishment, that she was carrying triplets. Shariya confessed, “I was speechless. I was panicking, but I had no time to panic.” The teen mom — barely more than a child herself — gave birth to her babies on August 30, after only 26 weeks of pregnancy.

Shariya named her babies Serenitee, Sarayah, and Samari; they spent the first five months of their little lives in the neonatal intensive care unit of Indianapolis’ Community Hospital North. While residing AT the unit, Shariya admitted to feeling isolated, telling People, “I felt like I couldn’t relate to all the other moms on the floor.” It was during this period that neonatal nurse Katrina first laid eyes on the lonely girl.

“She’d be there alone for days at a time sitting at her babies’ bedside,” Katrina told TV show TODAY. The experienced nurse began to wonder about Shariya’s circumstances. She never seemed to bring a lunch from home, nor any snacks to eat as she whiled away the long hours. She also never had any visitors: all of this told Katrina the girl likely didn’t have much support at home.

Katrina felt an urge to help somehow but knew she couldn’t push Shariya too hard because the girl was adamant that she didn’t want to talk about her home life. Katrina told TODAY, “I knew if I gave her time, she’d likely open up to me.” But after keeping her distance for a while, Katrina realized she did actually have the perfect ice breaker. You see, she and Shariya had something very significant in common.

“I wanted her to know that I was a teen mom, and that I knew how scary it was,” Katrina revealed to People. She told Shariya that, when she had been only 16, she’d given a baby up for adoption, and so she understood the turmoil the girl was experiencing. The empathetic nurse subsequently told TODAY, “Something shifted after I told her that I was a teen mom. That’s when we really developed trust.”

Over the next couple of months, a bond slowly began to develop. Katrina would call in to check on Shariya regularly during her 12-hour shifts, and eventually Shariya began leaving her room to look for Katrina too. Sometimes she would just sit in the charge nurse office with Katrina for hours on end, admitting to People, “It felt really good to finally have somebody to talk to that wasn’t on my phone.”

In January 2021 the real world came calling: Shariya’s babies were discharged from the unit one at a time, until she was home with all three. Before she left, though, she and Katrina had agreed to keep in touch, with the nurse telling TODAY, “I said, ‘If you need anything, you just call me. If you need to talk, or you have a question, I’m here.’”

The young mom soon began FaceTiming and texting Katrina regularly. She admitted to People, “I was really overwhelmed. I would just call Katrina and she would talk me down and tell me what to do.” Katrina told TODAY, “I’d help her when she was crying and overwhelmed. I couldn’t fix it, but I would listen and support her and be like, ‘You can do this.’”

Being a new mom with triplets is a tall order for anyone, let alone a 15-year-old kid, and Shariya’s obvious struggles simply increased Katrina’s worries about her support system. She struggled to believe that the girl didn’t have any family or friends on whom she could rely, but Shariya had never fully opened up about her home life, so she really didn’t know for sure. Katrina confessed, “I began to feel like I was her only support.”

In truth, having once been a teen mom herself, Katrina will have been keenly aware that the odds were stacked against Shariya. For example, according to the World Health Organization, “Adolescent mothers — aged 10–19 years — face higher risks of eclampsia, puerperal endometritis and systemic infections than women aged 20–24 years.” In addition, “Babies of adolescent mothers face higher risks of low birth weight, preterm birth and severe neonatal condition.”

On top of this, 51 percent of teen moms don’t finish high school, and therefore have no diploma. This directly leads to teen moms being unlikely to go to college; sadly, fewer than 2 percent earn a degree before the age of 30. This means their economic prospects are severely lowered. On top of all this, teen moms also face a high degree of social stigma and judgment in their communities.

All of this is why Katrina knew Shariya needed her. So, she visited her in Kokomo, Indiana, a few months after she’d left the hospital, and it went well: Shariya seemed to be coping with the demands of being a mom. But a few weeks later Katrina visited again because Shariya had revealed on FaceTime that Samari was suffering quite badly from eczema. This time Shariya had given Katrina a different address, and she got a much better idea of the girl’s true situation.

At the time, Shariya had been living with her aunt and sleeping on the couch, while her three babies didn’t have cribs: they simply spent their nights in a playpen. Katrina was shocked, telling TODAY, “It was not a place for her to raise babies.” Even worse, though, was Samari’s condition: the infant had lost weight, was almost bald, his eczema was out of control, and he had scratches on his skin.

The overwhelmed teen explained that her doctor had changed Samari’s formula, as he had suffered digestive issues from birth, but it seemed to have made things worse. Katrina told People, “I said, ‘You have to get him to the doctor today. He’s not okay.’” There was just one problem: if Shariya took Samari to the hospital, that would leave no one to watch Serenitee and Sarayah. Thankfully, Katrina stepped in.

With the girls safely in Katrina’s care, Shariya rushed Samari to a local medical center. Heartbreakingly, she was told her boy was “failing to thrive.” This is a clinical diagnosis meaning he had lost too much weight due to bad nutrition. It meant Child Protective Services had to be brought in to investigate, and the decision was made to put Shariya and her babies into foster care.

Katrina was soon contacted by the Department of Social Services, as two of the babies were in her care. She told TODAY, “The caseworker said that Shariya and her babies were being removed from their home.” Reeling from this, Katrina then heard the words, “Shariya said she’d like to come live with you. Would you be willing?” She was understandably taken aback and began cycling through scenarios in her head.

“I was dumbfounded,” Katrina admitted to People. “My brain was racing. I was thinking to myself how hard it was going to be for them to find a foster home for all four of them to stay together.” She added to TODAY, “No one was going to take a teen mom and her preemie triplets.” In the end, Katrina knew what she had to do, even if it was incredibly daunting.

The heroic nurse revealed, “I just kept thinking, ‘I have to do this.’ I knew Shariya was intelligent and resilient and she just needed a safe place to put her roots. I knew it would be hard, but we'd figure it out.” An emotional Shariya told People just how much Katrina’s help meant to her when she stated, “She was willing to help me when nobody else was.”

It wasn’t a simple matter of Katrina taking Shariya in immediately, though: she wasn’t a certified foster parent! She quickly did everything she could, beginning by taking the classes required to attain that certification in only two days. She also encouraged friends and family to donate as much baby stuff — strollers, cribs, toys, clothes — as possible. She laughed, “It was like a baby bomb went off in my living room!”

For the next 668 days, Katrina fostered Shariya and her babies. It was a transformative experience, as the new foster mom watched her young charge go from being a scared kid overwhelmed by her situation, to becoming a fully capable mom. In fact, Katrina was positively ecstatic when she described to TODAY just how much Shariya had grown into her parenting role.

Katrina revealed, “In the beginning, it was me pretty much doing everything for the babies and her observing and participating when she felt confident. And now she’s in charge. I’ll watch them if she wants to go hang out with her friends and stuff that teenagers do. But I’m just her backup.” She also smiled to People, “The most fun for me is being a grandma. That’s my favorite part. They are such a joy to me.”

On top of her admirable progress as a mom, Shariya committed to therapy to give herself the best chance of coping with everything life has thrown at her. She also enrolled at an alternative high school. Hearteningly, despite the worrying statistics of which Katrina was all-too-aware, in June 2023 Shariya graduated with an A-average grade! She now sees her future at Marian University, where she wants to study social work.

Fascinatingly, Shariya’s motivation for studying social work is as admirable as her efforts to improve her skills as a mom. She wants to become someone who can provide guidance for other young girls in her situation: in essence, she wants to be like Katrina. She told People, “I want to help other teen moms, because I wanted somebody like that in my corner. I think I would be a big help.”

Amazingly, the bond between foster mom and daughter then became unbreakable in February 2023 when Katrina officially adopted Shariya. She told TODAY, “I’m so proud to be Shariya’s mom. She just amazes me every day.” Katrina continued, “When she’s frustrated with the babies, she never raises her voice. She’s just blossoming into this incredible woman.” To her delight, Katrina can now officially be known as the babies’ grandma, or “LaLa,” as they call her!

To some, living with a young mom and her three babies — as well as your own five kids, three of whom still live at home — would be a recipe for disaster. Katrina, on the other hand, gushed to People, “They make me smile and laugh so much every day.” She continued, “If I am stressed or I’m in a bad mood… I just sit with them or one of them will run up to me and say, ‘You need a hug?’ I mean, it’s just the best.”

Now, this isn’t to say that everything is plain sailing in the Katrina/Shariya household, or that there won’t be trials and tribulations in the future. Katrina told TODAY, “Has it been easy? No! She pushes limits just like any other teenager.” Crucially, though, Shariya now knows she is loved, and that Katrina will be there for her. As she put it, “I’'m her mom — and I’m never going anywhere.”

Shariya’s school organized childcare for Serenitee and Sarayah while she attended, which eased the burden on the household. But Katrina still had to move around her nursing schedule to look after Samari, as his health issues have persisted. You see, the little fighter needs more daily care than most kids, including physical and occupational therapy and being fed through a tube. Thankfully, though, his sisters will be enrolling in a mainstream preschool in fall 2023.

All in all, Katrina told People, “My life has come full circle.” The teen mom who gave away her first child became a hero who added to her own family by legally adopting a teen in need, and she became a grandma to three beautiful babies in the process! It has certainly complicated her life, but in the best possible way. As she told People, “Every day is different and every day we just love each other through it, and we figure it out.”