A paraplegic man and his wife adopted embryos that were frozen 10 years apart. Now, they are having triplets.

• Zac and Brittney Wolfe were unable to conceive naturally, and IVF didn't work for them.
• Zac is paraplegic but that didn't contribute to their fertility issues, doctors said.

When Zac Wolfe was paralyzed in a car accident at the age of 19, he went through a tough period — but, he said, it lasted a relatively brief time.

"Your life has changed, but you learn to adapt," he said. He amazed doctors as he built up strength and muscle at an impressive pace. Soon, he could rotate the wheels of his wheelchair and his mobility continued to improve.

Now, 12 years later, Zac is facing another challenge — adapting to the role of hands-on dad. He recently became the adoptive parent of a 3-month-old baby. And to his surprise and delight, he's also an expectant father of triplets.

Brittney Wolfe is set to deliver the couple's triplets in mid-November

His wife, Brittney, is almost eight months pregnant with two girls and a boy. The embryos — two were frozen in 2011 and the third was frozen in 2021— came from strangers. The anonymous couples, who'd undergone in vitro fertilization treatments, had donated the spare embryos to the National Embryo Donation Center, based in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The Wolfe babies are set to be delivered in mid-November — less than four months after the couple adopted their daughter, Charlie.

"All of a sudden, things got crazy," Brittney, a registered nurse, told Insider. "It wasn't planned, but Charlie's adoption and the pregnancy happened at once."

Zac, who sustained a spinal-cord injury when a truck he was riding in lost control on a bend in the road, said that the couple's relationship developed after Brittney visited the rehab center he was in after the accident a few times.

They'd been friends since high school. It had been platonic, Zac said, but he found himself falling for her.

"I had to figure out how I was going to win her heart from being in a wheelchair," he said.

The answer, he realized, was to show Brittney how committed he was to regaining as much function as possible. "I'd been big into sports before the accident," he told Insider. "My big sport was wrestling."

Romance bloomed between Zac and Brittney at the rehab center

Brittney was impressed. "He was always trying from his first day at therapy," she said. "He was a hard worker with a lot of drive."

Romance blossomed, and the pair got married in August 2015. They wanted to start a family immediately. But, Brittney said, they couldn't get pregnant naturally.

"At first, we thought it was probably an issue with Zac because of his injury," Brittney, 32, told Insider. "But we had all kinds of testing, and it wasn't related — everything was normal for both of us."

They struggled with unexplained fertility for more than five years and spent nearly $100,000 on intrauterine insemination and IVF treatments that didn't work. They decided to try for adoption.

Zac said the couple built a website — which they still update —appealing for an adoptive child and "marketed" themselves as prospective parents via social media.

Unfortunately, Zac said, they were contacted by a number of scammers. Some even sent them ultrasound scans as supposed proof of their pregnancy. Each offer raised the couple's hopes. "They'd ask us for money," he said. "But as soon as we mentioned we had a lawyer, they'd disappear. It was mentally draining."

But the path that led them to Charlie was literally outside their door. In February 2022, a neighbor introduced them to a colleague whose daughter was putting her unborn child up for adoption. It looked promising, but the Wolfes hardly dared hope it would actually happen.

They'd already embarked on an alternative route to adoption. Convinced that an adoptive child might never come their way, Brittney received an embryo donation.

The ultrasound technician spotted twins — and then another fetus

The embryo-donation center — a Christian nonprofit that offers frozen-embryo transfers only to heterosexual couples who've been married at least three years — approved them as prospective parents. They selected three embryos. It was a closed adoption, so they received only select details about the donors' background. "It didn't matter to us that we weren't biologically related," Zac said.

The embryos were transferred to Brittney's uterus in fall 2022, but none implanted.

Then, in April this year, the Wolfes tried again. This time, all three of their embryos — twins from one set of donors frozen 12 years ago and the other embryo from a second couple who froze an embryo two years ago — implanted successfully.

"The ultrasound technician said it was twins, and we thought, 'Holy cow,'" Brittney said. "Then she said, 'There's three!' Zac swallowed hard."

The shock was heightened by the fact that their adoption of Charlie had moved forward. Her birth mother had chosen Brittney and Zac as adoptive parents. "We were about to become a family of six," Brittney said.

Charlie's birth mother was 20 weeks ahead of Brittney in her pregnancy. Brittney, who described the experience as "surreal," drove her to doctors' appointments between visits to her own OB-GYN.

The Wolfes attended Charlie's birth at the end of July. "It was emotional for everybody," Zac told Insider. "We got to take her home two days later."

When Brittney was 17 weeks pregnant, they found out she was carrying two girls and a boy. Two of the babies will be genetic siblings, and Zac said they'll need to do a test once the babies are born "to find out who's who."

The countdown to the birth has begun

The couple prepared for Charlie's arrival by adapting some of her furniture, such as the crib, so it was accessible to Zac.

"The crib has got special latches so I can lean into the crib to get her in and out," he said. "The mattress is a little higher than usual." Brittney's dad is helping them adapt the triplets' cribs in the same way.

Zac carries Charlie in a baby sling and on his lap using a wide, specially secured belt. Or she'll settle inside a little wagon on wheels that he attaches to his wheelchair.

The countdown has begun in earnest for the birth of Charlie's sisters and brother. "We can't wait to complete our family," Brittney said.

"We thought we might never have one child, let alone four," Zac said. "You should never give up hope."

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