Local family: Quads mean 1,000 diapers a month

Kari Terrell, from Leesburg Ohio, is celebrating Mother's Day on Sunday with her four 9 week old baby girls. Terrell delivered the quads in late February at Miami Valley Hospital. Terrell said the biggest challenge raising quads, 36 feedings a day.

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By Margo Rutledge Kissell Staff Writer, Staff Writer Updated 5:08 PM Friday, May 8, 2009

Imagine 36 bottle feedings a day and 1,000 diaper changes a month.

Welcome to Tim and Kari Terrell’s reality.

The aerospace engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and his wife became the proud parents of quadruplet daughters on Feb. 25 at Miami Valley Hospital. With son, Kasen, who turns 3 later this month, they became a family of seven overnight.

“It’s a big change,” Kari said during a visit to their Leesburg home about 15 miles south of Greene County that was surprisingly quiet and free of the chaos one might expect.

Credit that to Tim’s laid-back style, Kari’s organizational skills and daily help from family and friends.

“It’s down to a system and they’ve got it,” said her mother, Carole Williams of Sabina, who has pitched in virtually ever day since the babies — Tessa, Kaylee, Tysen and Kenzi — began arriving home one-by-one in March. They were born seven weeks early but are all healthy and, grandma noted, “have just grown by leaps and bounds.”

The biggest challenge?

“The 36 feedings a day,” Kari said. Peek into their refrigerator and you’ll find one shelf, labeled with the babies’ names beside dozens of color-coded bottles. A nearby sheet logs how much formula each baby has had during the feedings.

And then there’s the Excel spreadsheet in the changing room that keeps track of every one of those wet and dirty diapers.

“With this situation,” Kari said, “you have to have a system.”

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