STONEHAM – All around the Fox’s house are objects that appear in threes: three dressers, three cribs, three snuggly chairs, three fuzzy lamb toys, three purple dresses and three small purple hats.

In April, Erica Fox’s friend and colleague, Kelley Hodgman-Burns, gave birth to three baby girls after carrying Fox’s fertilized eggs to term.

Three of Fox’s fertilized embryos were implanted in Hodgman-Burns last September with the hope that at least one would survive to maturity. One was lost, the second survived (Dakota), and the third split into identical twins, Sierra and Cheyenne.

“This had been our dream for so long,” Fox, 33, said Wednesday, sitting at a table with photo albums filled with pictures from the first five months of her triplets’ lives.

After trying for four years with medical assistance to become pregnant, Fox, who has a medical condition called polycystic ovarian syndrome, turned to what seemed the one remaining possibility for her: a surrogate carrier.

And she found an enthusiastic carrier just around the corner, by coincidence. Hodgman-Burns and Fox both work for Fryeburg Academy: Hodgman-Burns as a residential life director, and Fox as a special education teacher.

Hodgman-Burns wanted to become a carrier before hearing about Fox’s predicament. A mother of three, Hodgman-Burns said she hoped to help someone become a parent because she was so grateful for her own children, and because she had grieved through the deaths of some children in the community.

It was a natural match. During the pregnancy, the two women grew very close. So close that Fox said she felt somewhat nervous after the delivery.

“The hardest part for me was when Kelley left (the hospital),” she said. “It was hard for both of us. She kept me trusting in the pregnancy, kept me strong. I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m doing this all by myself now.'”

Hodgman-Burns delivered the babies seven weeks early via C-section on April 8 at the Maine Medical Center in Portland.

“It was very surreal,” Fox said of the births. “Wow. They’re here,” she said she remembers thinking. “They’re finally here.”

The babies, although premature, each weighed more than five pounds.

“They’re chunky monkeys,” Fox said, speaking about her daughters’ robust health as she bounced Sierra on her lap at her Stoneham home.

Despite Fox’s trepidation of something changing in her intense bond with Hodgman-Burns, Hodgman-Burns has stayed involved, keeping in almost daily e-mail contact with her.

But Hodgman-Burns said too that she had to reconnect with her own family, since the pregnancy had made it difficult to be a mother, especially near the end of it.

After the birth, she said, “I retreated into my own life and felt that I needed to cut the umbilical cord, pardon the pun. I enmeshed myself back into my own family.”

Friends and family have been helping. Fox said the only time that’s rough is when the girls get hungry and a bit out of sorts.

She said Dakota is the most social baby, smiling and cooing. Sierra is the peacemaker. And Cheyenne often appears to be plotting. Supposedly when any one of them begins crying, it sets off a chain reaction. But they don’t cry much.

“It takes a lot of hands and people and a lot of love to make it work really,” Fox said.

Fox said she and her husband, Travis, who owns a construction company, are already thinking about having another child. A year ago, she stored her eggs at a Boston in vitro fertilization clinic, and still has six waiting. But the only way she’ll go through another pregnancy is if she can have a baby on her own, or if Hodgman-Burns would be her carrier again.

Hodgman-Burns said she might consider it, especially now that five months have passed to help her forget some of the physical discomfort.

“At first I was like, ‘Oh God I’m glad this is over,’ and although I still have weird feelings about my scar and I have stretch marks and a few pounds to lose, I think (the babies) are beautiful, and they look like their mom and dad. And Erica and Travis are so proud, they are like any other parent. They are so happy,” she said. “I am really grateful I could help them make their family.”