his wife, Erica, died of blood loss on Jan. 16 while giving birth to their quadruplets two months prematurely.
“I went from having the best day of my life to the next morning experiencing the worst day of my life,” said Morales. “My four babies came into the world and then my wife died.”
But all four babies, though tiny at between two and three pounds apiece, were healthy — and Morales has since been taking baby-care classes at a local hospital. “I need to be prepared,” he said.
“We really wanted to have a baby,” says Carlos. “So we started to try right away.”
After experiencing a miscarriage, which Carlos says “was beyond devastating,” they found out his wife Erica was pregnant last June after undergoing fertility treatment.
Carlos and Erica met at a nightclub in Scottsdale, Arizona, in 2006.
“I didn’t speak any English and she didn’t speak any Spanish,” Carlos tells PEOPLE, laughing. “But I asked her to dance and she said yes”
He only found out later that Erica, a real estate agent, ended up throwing out a piece of paper he gave her that night with his number scribbled on it.
But through mutual friends, they saw each other again, and the rest, as they say, is history.
He knew right away he wanted to marry her. Erica learned Spanish, Carlos learned English, and in 2007 they got married in Las Vegas.
“We couldn’t have been more excited to finally have a baby,” he says. “Erica was taking such good care of herself.”
When she went for her first sonogram, she found out she wasn’t just having one baby, but four.
“Her doctor told her she had to just relax,” Carlos says. “So that’s exactly what she did.”
Carlos cooked, cleaned and made sure Erica stayed off her feet. Erica’s mother even moved into their house to help them.
Doctors closely monitored Erica, who was healthy throughout her pregnancy.
On Jan. 12, Erica was checked into the hospital because she was experiencing