Quints settle into their home

By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
CANFIELD -- Olivia is the oldest and may be the biggest, but Mom says she'll be the dainty one.
"It's just so dainty when she cries," Leslie Hudock said. "She cries a little more dainty than the rest."
Olivia, not quite 3 months old, weighs about 6 pounds now. She and her two brothers and two sisters spent their first day at home Friday. The quintuplets, born July 30, were released from the Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland on Thursday.
As the children took a late-morning nap, Dad Tony Hudock worked in the family room to assemble a plastic shelf. Mom was getting ready to do a load of laundry.
Boxes from car seats, bouncing chairs and five mobiles sat empty.
Three pink helium balloons and two blue ones hovered at the ceiling.
In the bedroom, the babies gurgled in their sleep, with three cribs lined up against one wall and two against another. The bunnies, horses, ducks and bears on their mobiles watched over them in stillness.
Hudock said the siblings are easy to tell apart -- they have different looks. But as she was giving out their names, she made a little slip.
"This is Samantha," she said at the first crib, where a tiny girl slept beneath a yellow comforter. Moving on to the second crib, she paused: "Oh. No. That's Olivia. This is Samantha. Sorry, Olivia."
How they're doing
Samantha was the second to be born.
"She'll be the tomboy," Tony said.
"William will be the ladies man," he added. "All the nurses fell in love with him."
"Chloe, she's a peanut," Leslie said. "She's the smallest. But she was feisty down in NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). Boy, did she have a temper. But she's calmed down."
Andrew, the youngest, is the "fighter in the bunch," Tony said.
All of the babies, born at 26 weeks gestation, had some health problems, but Andrew's were the worst. He nearly died from a pulmonary hemorrhage when he was 2 days old.
He and Chloe both had heart surgery and respiratory problems and were on ventilators. Andrew has chronic lung disease. Olivia and Samantha have been the healthiest.
The Hudocks underwent in-vitro fertilization at The Reproductive Center in Youngstown after trying to have children for five years. A doctor planted five eggs, telling them it was unlikely that all would develop. Tony said they were told the chance of having triplets was less than 1 percent.
The couple said they could not have come through the past months alone. They thanked staff at St. Elizabeth and Rainbow Hospital as well as their parents, John and Gwen Hudock and David and Dorothy Hall, who live nearby, and the community.
Tony had one other person to thank. "Mom, because she took good care of herself," he said, motioning toward his wife. "She did what she was told and felt in her heart."
Visitation restricted
Leslie was breathing a sigh of relief just to be home. She spent about a month at St. Elizabeth Health Center beginning in June before being moved to Cleveland for the birth. She had not been home since.
Now that they're home, Tony said, the couple must let the babies develop a few more months before they can have many visitors. A cold or virus could cause serious problems.
But they are making the adjustment well. Mom and dad have put them on a schedule. Once the babies wake, they "feed them, burp them, give them a little bit of lovin' and put them back to bed," Tony said.
They cry only when they're hungry or need a diaper change.
Hunger strikes about 25 times a day and diapers are changed about 45 times, Tony said. Putting them to sleep is a 21/2-hour process.
The toughest part is letting them go.
"I want to hold them forever," Leslie said.
"We love them so much," Tony added.