CLEVELAND Still in NICU, local quints meet press

The Hudocks are planning to bring their babies home in November.
By ROSA MERCADO
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
CLEVELAND -- The Hudock quintuplets from Canfield are getting their first taste of celebrity status.
Tony and Leslie Hudock gave the world the first glimpse of their five babies Monday at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital here.
Olivia Nicole, Samantha Rose, William Anthony, Andrew David and Chloe Anne, born 14 weeks premature July 30 are all doing well in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. All are off ventilators except Chloe Anne.
"It's a wonderful thing," said Tony Hudock during a press conference at the hospital. "God knew we wanted children so much, he gave us five."
The Hudocks underwent in-vitro fertilization at The Reproductive Center in Youngstown after trying to have children for five years. The couple has stayed in Cleveland with their babies since their birth, returning home only for brief visits.
"The delivery room was a chaotic scene," said neonatologist Dr. Deanne Wilson. "The babies are trying to gain weight -- they are all above 2 pounds now."
At birth each weighed between 1 and 2 pounds.
"It was getting rough toward the end," Leslie Hudock said of her pregnancy, which included weeks in a hospital bed. "It's not for the faint of heart."
Spending time
The five babies have their own room in the NICU, equipped with five incubators.
"We spend five to six hours a day with the babies," Tony Hudock said. Although they're in incubators, the infants know their parents are in the room, he added.
The Hudocks expect to bring their babies home at the end of November.
They said they will have lots of help with the children once they're back in Canfield.
"Instead of one big adjustment, it's going to be five adjustments," Leslie Hudock said.
Her husband has already made some calculations.
"They go through about 40 diapers a day," he said. A GM autoworker for 25 years, he said feeding, clothing and changing five babies will not be a hard job.
"I'll just use an assembly-line process," he said.
rmercado@vindy.com