KYLE, Texas — Nichole and Nathan Faylor, both 27, always wanted a big family. But after enduring five miscarriages, they began to wonder if they would become parents.
They sought the help of a specialist who, with the aid of low dose fertility drugs, began to monitor Sister Faylor. Soon she was pregnant.
At their first sonogram, they anxiously searched for a heartbeat. Instead of one, they counted five. "It took a couple of days to come to grips with what was happening," Sister Faylor recalled. "I kept looking at the sonogram, saying, 'There are five — I am looking at five.' "
They told their family and bishop in the Plum Creek Ward, Austin Texas Oak Hills Stake and went to the temple.
At no time did the couple panic. They simply calculated what a normal baby needs, and multiplied it by five. They bought cribs at garage sales, and purchased a minivan.
Brother Faylor, who works for Motorola, began doing all the housework; Sister Faylor consumed 5,000 calories a day, eating every two hours and spending time at the public swimming pool to take the weight of five fetuses off her back.
The couple also plotted a calendar marking red months for a delivery that would come too early; August was their yellow zone. The babies — Joshua, Jonathan, Joseph, Nataleigh, and Cathryn — were born Sept. 1 at 32 weeks. Weighing from 2 pounds-12 ounces to 4 pounds-5 ounces, the children stayed in the hospital for between four and six weeks.
Church members prayed for the family, then dug in and helped. A ward member, Lynn Kramer, built cradles for the children, carving their names in each one. The stake began sponsoring a diaper drive. The babies go through between 40 and 50 diapers and 30 bottles a day.
"There are times when all the kids are screaming and yelling and all we can do is look at each other and smile and laugh," said Sister Faylor. "I can't say we haven't had some sleepless nights, and not just because the kids are awake — we already have worry lines."
A local newspaper plans to follow the children for their first year and a television station has already come to tape "a day in the life of the Faylors." But Sister Faylor lets all the media know one thing up front: "There are times when the camera will have to go down, because when it is feeding time, everyone [including the camera operator] holds a bottle."
