Callie and Gabriel Smith with Norah, Selah, Ezra and Abigail Smith.Photo:Nicole Rea of NikkiB Photography
Nicole Rea of NikkiB Photography
Callie and Gabriel Smith had already welcomed three children when their quadruplets arrived in June, but in some ways, the California couple’s new babies made them feel like rookie parents.
“It feels like they’re our first kids because they’re our first preemies,” Callie, 36, tells PEOPLE exclusively.
“It’s definitely been a learning curve,” the mom of seven adds. “We’ve had to readjust our expectations and we’re just constantly trying to figure it out as we go."
When the Smith babies — Norah, Selah, Ezra and Abigail Smith — were born nine weeks early on June 16, their birth was a seamless operation, according to neonatologist Dr. Huy Truong.
“The delivery could not have gone better,” Truong tells PEOPLE. “After all the preparation and other precautions, it all occurred without any hiccups.”
Truong says those on call anticipated that the babies would require oxygen and feeding tubes when they were born, and the quads spent time in the NICU at Kaiser Permanente in Fontana, learning how to breathe and eat on their own over a 40-plus day stay.
Norah and Selah went home together at the end of July, while Ezra and Abigail left the hospital about a week later, Callie says.
But due to feeding issues at home, Abigail soon returned. She later underwent successful surgery to close a blood vessel, which runs from her pulmonary artery to her aorta, according to Truong.
Gabriel and Callie Smith are adapting to life with seven kids in Upland, California.Nicole Rea of NikkiB Photography
Before an ultrasound revealed they were expecting four times over, Callie underwent seven rounds of IUI (intrauterine insemination) and had a harrowing ectopic pregnancy (“when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the main cavity of the uterus,” per theMayo Clinic) in the course of a year.
Gabriel, 37, says that learning they were expecting four babies “was a miracle” but that it did require them to go into planning mode.
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But one week after the happy arrival of their quads, Gabriel lost his older brother to a heart attack at the age of 49. When Gabriel learned the devastating news, he went to be with his family in San Diego, while Callie stayed home in Upland with the children.
“In this household, we planned for everything except for that," he says, sharing that he “just kind of bottomed out for a while” while grieving the loss of his brother.
But the couple pushed through the difficult time and are now adjusting with the help of friends and their church community. AGoFundMehas also been created to help the family pay for a new van.
“They’ve really reached out,” Gabriel says of their support system. “We were like, ‘We’ll figure this out, and we kind of got this.’ And then it’s like, okay, we don’t got this.”
Callie agrees: “Every week, it’s kind of an uphill battle, we’re getting very little sleep, probably like two or three hours each night. But we know it’s a season."
“We have the benefit of having other kids, so we know that things are going to get a little bit easier,” she adds. “And it has been a joy, seeing their little personalities come out.”
source: people.com
