In January, Kim Tucci grabbed headlines when she gave birth to quintuplets via C-section in just two minutes. “It literally felt like my body was shutting down,” the 26-year-old told 60 Minutes about delivering son Keith and daughters Ali, Penelope, Tiffany and Beatrix with a team of 50 doctors. The babies — who were born at 30 weeks — joined sisters Aiva, 5, Indiana, 2, and brother Kurt, 9. (That means that, just like Kate Gosselin, Tucci is a mother of eight.)
The Australia-based mom and her husband, Vaughn Tucci, conceived the babies without IVF or fertility drugs. The odds of this occurring are 1 in 55 million.
During her pregnancy, Tucci detailed her daily struggles in her brutally honest blog, Surprised By Five. But intense back pain and twelve nightly trips to the bathroom were nothing compared to the reality of caring for five needy 4-month-old babies with gas and acid reflux.
“We do cope with the change but we have our days where everything is is a little bit too much,” Kim wrote on Friday, May 27, during a Q&A on the Huggies Australia Facebook page. “We have volunteers coming in and our house is constantly buzzing with people so we’ve lost our privacy. Whilst we love the support and are so grateful for it, it’s been hard to adjust to such a different lifestyle.”
Meanwhile, Kim isn’t the only one who is having trouble adjusting to chaotic life. “When the quintuplets are crying and struggling for our attention, my other children can act out,” she wrote. “My 9 year old son is old enough to cope and my younger two find it hard.”
She added: “Having time for everyone is the hardest thing.”
Shockingly, however, there are moments of peace and quiet. “They cry together, settle together and sleep together,” Kim explained. “So basically, after we do the feeding rounds they are all pretty settled. They are very much connected.”
Just a few staggering statistics about life as a mother of five babies: Kim, who breastfed for six weeks, revealed that the quintuplets are fed formula every three hours and go through 60 diapers a day!
