Life for 30-year-old Melissa Reid, of Dove Creek, has been all about the numbers since she brought her quadruplets home.
Thirty-six diapers a day.
Four hours between feedings.
Eight kids in the house.
One 13-ounce can of condensed formula a day.
Thirty-two bottles a day.
Her four babies – Ryder, Aela, Kamden and Brinlee – are doing well, and at 3 months. the little bundles of joy have livened up the Reid home. The quadruplets were born on July 28 in Denver and because they were premature didn’t go home to Dove Creek home until Aug. 24. Since then, the family has been settling into a routine.
“It was pretty hectic at first, but it actually is easy once we got them on a schedule,” Melissa said.
On Tuesday morning, all four babies were happy, eating and eager to watch visitors in their home.
“We are just really happy they are all healthy,” she said.
Statistically speaking, there is one quadruplet birth for every 700,000 births. Meliss and Matt Reid weren’t using fertility medicine or even trying to have a baby. So that makes the chances of such a birth more rare, estimated at 1 in a million.
Melissa and Matt already had four children in the house: Gauge,12, Tanol 10, Jesslyn, 6, and Zaylee, 22 months.
When Melissa went to her doctor, he joked that she was going to have a litter.
“That was before he found out I was going to have four babies,” she said. “When he found out, he called me right away and apologized about the joke. But he was so excited for us.”
Melissa initially was told that she would have five babies.
“I was shocked,” she said. “You don’t want to know what I said.”
Later, the family got additional news when Matt was laid off from his factory job in Nevada.
That’s when Melissa made the decision to move closer to family in Dove Creek. Matt said Tuesday that he’s now working at a hardware store in Dove Creek.
Grandma Diane Brown helps out as much as she can.
“You really have to keep them on a schedule,” Brown said.
“We feed them all at the same time; otherwise, we wouldn’t get anything done,” Melissa said.
They all get their diapers changed at the same time, they all eat every four hours and, for the most part, they all sleep at the same time.
Melissa said Brown helps out with day feedings, and Matt gets up for night feedings.
There are two girls and two boys, and they are all fraternal quadruplets, meaning they developed from different eggs.
But sometimes Melissa has to laugh.
“Sometimes Ryder will be in Kamden’s crib, and I will give Matt a hard time,” she joked.
When asked how she does it, Melissa smiles the smile of a mom who has things under control.
“Lots and lots of patience,” she said. “And lots of support.”
Melissa says there is a reason for everything. She used to work with people with mental disabilities, a job that required a lot of patience. That job is what prepared her for being a mother of eight, she said.
“It taught me to be very, very patient,” she said. “There really is a reason for everything.”
Melissa said her mom has been a big help and a local church buys the family diapers. In addition, community members have given the family food and clothing.
“We’ve had tons of community support,” Melissa said.
The family recently took a trip to the Hauser Pumpkin Patch in Cortez. It was the first family outing for the family of 10. To do so, they had to borrow a van from a friend – there just isn’t enough room in the family’s 2000 Plymouth Voyager and 1993 Geo Metro.
But for the most part, Melissa says she is keeping the babies at home. It’s flu season, and she doesn’t want them to get sick, but there is also the transportation issue.
“We can’t really do a whole lot because we don’t have a van that fits the whole family,” she said.
In the meantime, Melissa has been taking the babies to their appointments.
The doctors churn out more numbers: Aela is 9.10 pounds, Kamden is 8.13, Ryder is 8.5 and Brinlee is 8.14 Not bad. They were all small when they were born. Ryder, the smallest and first born, weighed 2.10 pounds.
“They are really good babies,” she said, as the babies drifted off to sleep. “I think I have it easy now. It’s when they start moving around that the real fun begins.”
Melissa said her older kids have adjusted to the large family, but it was not easy at first. In fact, one of the hardest parts was toward the end of her pregnancy, when doctors ordered Melissa to be hospitalized for weeks for the safety of the babies.
“It’s a little overwhelming to double the size of your family overnight.”
