The Murphys : Six Children (Plus)

WHEN CHRIS MURPHY COMES TO THE door of her rambling Santa Monica house, she’s clutching her youngest child, 13-month-old Flannery, in her arms and is pregnant with another child, due in mid-December. Upstairs, her husband and most of their six children--four boys and two girls, the oldest aged 8--are on one of the porches watching a fire over on Wilshire Boulevard.

A couple of the kids are in Daddy’s arms; a few are clinging to railings. Every child has a nickname, so it’s tough to figure out who’s who: There’s Shaggy, the Flake and the Refrigerator, fondly known as “Fridge.” Some of the kids appear to be extras, and this turns out to be the case; the neighbor girls love to hang out at the Murphys’ because it’s a fun place. The Murphys also have 3 dogs, 4 cats, 10 rabbits and an assortment of fish. In the back yard is a full-size trampoline; inside are dozens of toys and games and hardly any furniture. All around is a feeling that this is a place where kids are more important than grown-ups.

Michael and Chris met at County-USC Medical Center nine years ago; he was a resident, she was a nurse, and they were working on the same patient. “I asked him out,” Chris says, “and he said no. I didn’t realize he was going with a girl upstairs in the ICU.” A week later, he called Chris and told her he wanted to take her up on her offer. They began to date and were married shortly thereafter.

Michael, who is a practicing Catholic, comes from a family of seven children. Chris, whose parents are Methodist and Jewish, has two sisters (one is her twin) and a brother. Her parents live nearby, and they have converted their back yard to a playground for the grandchildren.

Chris and Michael knew from the beginning that they wanted a lot of children and that they wanted them right away. “I didn’t want to be going to Little League games in my 70s,” Michael says, “although I’d do it if I had to.”

Their first baby was born nine months and a few days after their wedding. Chris continued to work as a nurse until their fifth child was born, and she will probably go back to work, one night a week, after their seventh child--”and their last,” she swears--is born. “It will be extremely difficult,” she says, “not to have a baby around.”

Michael, 40, and Chris, 36, do not seem to need, or want, to be alone together. “We never say, ‘Go away, Daddy and Mommy want their privacy,’ ” Chris says. The three eldest kids slept with them when they were infants and toddlers. That started to get a little crowded, so now parents and children, except for the baby, Flannery, all sleep in the same big room, distributed among four beds.

Michael occasionally will come home from his neurology practice in the evening, read the kids some stories, serve five bottles, put them to bed and go back to work. When he comes home again at midnight and goes to bed, he’ll soon have some sleeping companions.

“To have all these kids,” Michael says, “you have to be lighthearted and mutable. You can’t have a lot of fixed ideas.”

When children wake up in the middle of the night and need comforting, Michael always gets up with them. “Fortunately,” he says, “I do not need a lot of sleep. I can get up 12 times a night and not feel bad in the morning. I get my energy from the kids.”