VIDEO: Meet the Heath Hayes triplets who all work at Tesco

Nov 29 2011 by Zoe Chamberlain, Sunday Mercury

THEY are Tesco triplets. Kelly, Simmone and Stacey Roadway have left shoppers and co-workers doing double-takes after landing jobs with the supermarket giant.

And the girls are so similar that even their mum and boyfriends have failed to tell them apart in the past.

The pretty sisters celebrated their 21st birthday on Monday – but their lives got off to a heartbreaking start.

Their mother Elaine, from Heath Hayes, Staffordshire, recalled: “My husband told me he was leaving while I was actually giving birth.

“I couldn’t believe it but, to be honest, I didn’t have time to think about it. I was too busy!”

The girls were born on November 21, 1990.

Simmone and Stacey were classed as identical as they came from the same egg.

Elaine, who was already mother to two older boys, brought the babies home from hospital a fortnight later – in thick snow.

“No-one could get to us because of the snowfall, so I was totally on my own for a couple of weeks,’’ she recalled.

“I breastfed two girls at a time then the third one afterwards. It was tough, but easier than trying to sterilise all those bottles.

“They were really good babies and their brothers, Craig and Carl, also helped to amuse them.

“It was the nights that were exhausting. I’d only get one and a half hours sleep between feeds.

‘‘When one woke up, I tended to wake them all up to feed them, otherwise I’d never get any sleep.

“But after around three months they started sleeping through to 6am.

“I kept the hospital bands on their little legs for as long as I could because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.”

Getting out and about was never easy for the mum-of-five.

Elaine, 51, says: “I had a triple buggy but I couldn’t get it onto the bus or into the boot of the car.

“I couldn’t fit all the children into one car, so if we wanted to drive somewhere then someone would have to come with us.’’

It was clear from an early age that the girls had a unique bond.