SAN ANTONIO — A San Antonio family is celebrating a big milestone.
On January of 2001, quadruplets – Sean, Kassandra, Jonathan and Christopher Gallardo – were born four months early.
"You see them and you're like, 'What? 23 weeks? There's just no way,'" their mother, Lidia, said. "They're a miracle."
Doctors tried to keep two children in the womb as long as they could. That's why the quadruplets were born three days apart; two on Jan. 26 and the other pair on Jan. 29.
"They (the doctors) gave me everything that could happen," Lidia said, "and they took it one day at a time. They even told me, 'Be prepared if you're going to have to make the decision to take them off of oxygen.'"
The four weighed less than two pounds and they each went home on their own time. Sean spent the longest in the hospital, a total of seven months.
But now the quadruplets are 18 years old are looking forward to graduation and the journey that still lies ahead.
"Even though they have the disabilities, they still are reaching for those dreams like anybody else does," Lidia said. "Each one wants to go to college. One wants to be chef, one wants to study music, the other wants to be an architect. Then I have Kassandra, she wants to be an astronomer. She's going to the moon."