Watch the video to find out more about the survival guide.
[rumble video_id=v5c0y5 domain_id=u7nb2 iframe]
Management analyst Chad Kempel, 37, has had to up his parenting game after his family expanded from having two toddlers to a total of seven with the addition of quintuplets. He put his creative nature to good use baby-proofing the whole house, making custom furniture, and basically inventing parental life hacks to make sure he’s able to take care of all of them at the same time. And now he’s sharing his hilarious “survival guide” to parents.
It was not an easy journey for Chad and his wife, Amy, from San Mateo. They first suffered through four miscarriages, lost their twins at 16 weeks, and went through more than 20 rounds of IUI until the quintuplets were finally conceived.
The little ones, Lincoln, Noelle, Grayson, Preston, and Gabriella, are now at 18 months and join two older siblings, Savannah, 4, and Avery, 3.
Since filming their life hacks to share online, their transit van has transformed into a mobile baby unit. Their dining table also acquired five additional seats and Chad just made a world record for the fastest marathon while pushing a five-baby-stroller.
Chad said: “When the doctor said he could hear four heartbeats and then a fifth, we couldn’t really believe it.
“When we found out there would be five we didn’t know how we would cope, but after losing twins in 2013, we knew we had to go for it.
“One of the first things we had to do was create a big playroom, somewhere where we knew they could all be at the same time without any dangers, we had to take anything sharp and valuable out for good.
“We have made all sorts of things to help, including props to hold their bottles for them when feeding so we don’t have to feed them one at a time and a custom table that can seat them all at once.
“We also had to convert a transit van into a baby bus, which we have made our own changing table for inside as well as fitting in television so our older girls have something do when we have to feed and change the quintuplets on a journey, which can take a couple of hours.
“When we feed them now it can get a bit hectic, some of them like to throw their food around, some are quite well behaved, and now and again they’ll sit down and actually eat.
“It’s a lot like the movie ‘Home Alone’ when we travel, I’ll be running in the front and we’ll have our army of children following behind.”
The quintuplets were born on January 2018 at 27 weeks and all of them weighed 2 lbs.
After trying to feed all five individually at the start, Chad built furniture that ensured he could feed them all within 30 minutes.
Chad said: “It could take about two and a half hours to get them all fed, by which point baby-one would need feeding again.
“Now we line them all up with a little hook prop I made for each cot which holds their bottles in place.
“There’s always so much to do, I’m sure anyone can imagine what it’s like to have five babies to look after and the job never really stops.
“We had to find hacks on how to speed things up, clothes stacking is such a simple idea but it speeds up changing so much and I want to be able to help Amy as much as I can when I’m not there, so we have made all these different props to help the basic tasks.
“Companies do sell stuff that can help deal with multiples, but the prices are crazy, so I just made our own.”
The quintuplets also complicated travel arrangements as fitting the whole family into their car was a challenge.
Chad said: “I never thought in a million years I would drive a transit van, but we’ve modified it to fit our family.
“The transit van has space for every child to sit in, a changing table that rests in the already fitted seat headrests, we even fit a TV in there.”
But seven toddlers wasn’t enough to keep Chad from having fun as he even set a world record by finishing a marathon while pushing the quintuplets to the finish line.
He added: “The race was really hard because we had five children to take care of along the way with feeding and changing happening throughout.
“One technique that worked well was double diapering them, whenever they needed changing, I could whip one off and have the next diaper on in half the time and my brother was there on hand to feed them when they needed it.
“I decided to run an extra mile, making the total distance 27.3 miles, to commemorate the amount of time my amazing wife carried our quintuplets.”