Premature Quadruplets All in Fair Condition : Newborns: O.C.’s newest mother of quads gets some helpful hints from another recent parent, Karen Miner.

Quadruplets--three girls and a boy--born to a Santa Ana couple Wednesday night were all in fair condition Thursday at UCI Medical Center.

Doctors said the boy, Jeremy Stewart Amante, who has been receiving oxygen, will require medication to help close an opening between his heart and lungs that is common in premature infants.

But at 3 pounds, 9 1/2 ounces, Jeremy is the largest of the quads and is expected to do fine, said Dr. James Banks, the neonatologist on duty at the intensive care unit. The babies, small enough to be cradled together in two palms, arrived 11 weeks early and were all delivered by Cesarean section within two minutes.

“These babies are big, healthy 29-weekers,” said Banks. “They are doing absolutely wonderfully, which is unusual in itself.”

Meanwhile their mother, 28-year-old Consolacion (Solly) Amante, has already received flowers, reassurances and how-to tips from Orange County’s other recent veteran of quadruplets.

“It hasn’t been bad at all,” said Karen Miner, an Orange schoolteacher who gave birth to two boys and two girls seven months ago, and now has “one crawler and three scooters.”

“I kept waiting for the bomb to drop, for it to get unbearable and terrible, but it hasn’t,” Miner said Thursday. “I only hope Solly has it as easy.”

What the new mother will need most, Miner said, is full-time help. Other essential tools for quad-rearing, she said, include baby swings.

“Battery-run, definitely, because she’s never going to have time to go wind up those swings. And she needs a battery recharger, because she’s not going to be able to afford to keep buying batteries,” Miner said.

The three Amante girls--Jeraldine Elaine and Jessamine Eileen, both 2 pounds 14 1/2 ounces, and Jacqueline Elise, 2 pounds 12 ounces--were being fed for the first time Thursday afternoon with a half-strength formula specially blended for premature infants.

Because of their virtually identical features, which include matching dimples on their left cheeks, doctors and nurses suspect the three girls are identical, meaning they developed from the same egg. They won’t know for sure, however, until tests have been completed on blood samples and the four placentas.

“The girls are beautiful. They look just like their mother,” said Mari Jo Craft, head nurse of the Infant Special Care Unit.

All four babies have shocks of jet-black curly hair covered by tiny ski caps--pink and white for the girls, blue and white for Jeremy.

“He’s got a forehead just like his father,” Craft said.

At least three other sets of quadruplets have been born in Orange County. In 1969, Mrs. Robert Curtin of Garden Grove gave birth to four boys, three of whom survived. Janet and Scott Lederhaus, formerly of Santa Ana and now of Claremont, had three boys and a girl in 1983, and they helped prepare Al and Karen Miner before their quads were born on Feb. 12.

Unlike the previous two sets of quadruplets, the Amante babies are natural and not the result of fertility drugs, doctors said. The chances of such a spontaneous birth are about one in 512,000, said Manuel Porto, who delivered both the Miner and the Amante quadruplets.

However, Solly Amante, also the mother of 4-year-old Jonathan and 1-year-old Jane Amante, did receive special prenatal care.

The 5-foot-1, small-boned Filipino mother learned that she was having quadruplets only when she had an ultrasound late this summer. She spent most of the last two months in bed.

“They were packed in there very tightly,” reported head nurse Craft. “It was probably like popcorn popping when they moved.”

Solly Amante was hospitalized with premature contractions on Aug. 20. Doctors gave her steroids to accelerate the growth of the fetuses and sought to delay delivery so that the babies would be more fully developed at birth, Banks said.

That strategy seemed to have paid off, Banks said, noting that the babies were unusually hardy for quadruplets born nearly three months early.

Amante was not up to an interview Thursday, but nurses said she would be seeing the babies for the first time since their birth.

“I’m excited,” said their father, Oscar Amante, 30, who works for an Irvine computer printer manufacturer and was on his way to visit the newborns Thursday afternoon. “I was in shock, but I’m excited.”

Doctors said the mother may be well enough to go home within three to four days, but the quadruplets will not be able to follow until each has reached 5 pounds.

When they do come home, Miner said, organization is key. Every day, she prepares 20 bottles for the following day, keeps records of each baby’s feeding and changing to prevent slip-ups and has mastered the art of feeding two quads in her lap while sticking a bottle in the mouth of a third.

Six weeks ago, the Miners even went away for the weekend and left the quads with their grandparents. “I said to Al, the key is not how they did this time, but will they ever do it again ?” she said about their baby-sitters.

Among her other advice for the Amantes: “Remember that babies do cry. Take one day at a time. And accept the help. Say yes, yes, yes, yes.”