Sisters together at last
Final member of League City family’s quintuplets able to come home
Danielle Busby looks forward, 20 years from now, to driving a regular car instead of a huge van.
“I won’t have to drive a bus anymore,” she says.
On Monday, Busby, 31, and her husband, Adam Busby, rolled out their daughter, Ava, from The Woman’s Hospital of Texas. Adorned in a light pink headband, Ava was the last of the couple’s quintuplets to go to their League City home. She joined the other quints — Olivia, Hazel, Parker and Riley — and Blayke, the couple’s 4-year-old daughter.
The five girls were the first all-girl quintuplets ever born in the United States. They were delivered April 8 after 28 weeks and two days of pregnancy.
“It’s pretty crazy, I’m so glad we finally get to see them all together, and just stare at them all by each other,” said Danielle
Busby, holding Ava and her sister, Hazel, while sitting on a couch at home.
The parents are looking forward to seeing the babies’ personalities emerge and their interactions with their older sister, Danielle said.
“This is crazy and it’s hard, like you know adjusting to sleep and all this, but in a few months when they have their personalities … it’s gonna be hilarious,” she said.
The quintuplets wore different-colored bow headbands at home, and the parents will continue the color coordination. Blayke, their oldest, points out that this system might break down if Danielle puts pink, “the universal girl color,” on a baby whose designated color is not pink.
“Not everything is gonna be in their color, but when we find five of something, or five of the same things that might be like, in the different color, it might not be their colors, but if it’s something five, we buy it,” said Danielle, who is now a stay-at-home mom. “We try to get it, because it’s just so hard, like their pacifiers, I saw five different colors, bam. Done.”
The babies will go through 40 bottles and roughly 60 diapers daily. The formula bill will be “a little over $2,000” a month once they are on full eightounce bottles, said Adam Busby, 33, who works in industrial communications.
“So it’s scary,” Adam said. “It’s a little scary, but I mean God’s provided all through this journey, and so I mean, we’re not scared.”
Family and friends have been helping, such as through the couple’s care calendar, which shows feeding times. The family has received financial help from a GoFundMe page. (http://www.gofundme. com/BusbyQuints)
“We’re originally from Louisiana, and so our church family there in Louisiana as well as our church family here in Texas, they’ve just been asking us, what’s an easy way for us to help you,” Adam said. “And that’s why, through some friends from church and stuff, that’s how we created the GoFundMe for us.”
The page, which has raised $21,090 since it was created on Dec. 4, was not intended for the general public, the father said. Rather, it was for “close friends” and “church family” who wanted to help.
The couple has a blog (http://itsabuzzworld. com) chronicling their experience. They started it for family and friends, Adam Busby said, but it now has tens of thousands of followers, including people abroad.
The couple does not plan to have more children.
“We’d end up with a seventh daughter,” Adam said.