SACRAMENTO (CBS Sacramento) – Carrying three babies is no easy feat, especially when their weight breaks a record. Triplets born at Sutter Memorial Hospital earlier this month had a combined weight of 20 pounds, making them the heaviest triplets on record.

“We were excited. We were scared out of our minds,” mom Brittany Deen said.

Most triplets come premature and pint sized, thanks to fertility drugs; but these guys came the natural way, and they must have loved life inside mommy.

Mom was able to carry the boys near to term. They waited 37 weeks to get out. That’s nine months to grow, and grow, and grow.

Sidney, the biggest one, weighed in at 7.8 pounds; Elliott, the middle son, weighed in at 7.2 pounds; and Jenson, the smallest, came in at 5.5 pounds. Together they made for a Guinness World Record setting 20 pound child birth.

“I don’t feel like it was hard, because we were doing it for them,” said Deen.

She may be a modest mom, but what she did took sheer strength.

If you’ve been grocery shopping, then you know that 20 pounds is no joke. That’s the same weight as two big bags of potatoes, or 36 onions, or 40 loaves of bread, or four gallons of milk. There’s no doubt this new mom is going to need a whole lot of caffeine.

“I was eating for 17,” said Deen.

Deen followed doctor’s orders to create her three peas in a pod. On a slow day, she was eating 6,000 calories.

“These babies are, and have been, relying on us to fight for them,” said Brittany.

Deen gained more than 80 pounds during her pregnancy, but lost 50 pounds of it almost instantly.

“Regardless of what Brittany said, she is a ferocious warrior,” grandmother Deb Miller said.

Apparently so are her boys, making their mark on mom and the world by setting a record just by being born.

Brittany and husband Jason looked back at their family history and genealogy, and discovered they have one set of twins who are distant cousins. So, the fact they have triplets is random and remarkable.

To have triplets without using any fertility drugs happens once out of every 8,000 births.

The parents are still waiting on Sidney to be released, after he becomes strong enough to eat on his own.