Going Home : Births: A Palmdale couple leave with the last of their quadruplets, but not before a Tarzana hospital gives the family of six a send-off full of hoopla.

Steve and Gail Dubell planned to have two children.

On Monday, they left Tarzana Regional Medical Center as a family of six.

The Palmdale couple were bringing home the last of the quadruplets that Gail Dubell gave birth to on Oct. 3.

“We’d had some infertility help but we weren’t expecting quadruplets,” said Gail Dubell, 31, who had taken fertility drugs and underwent surgical procedures to help her get pregnant. “But since we wanted children so much, we were very happy once we got over the surprise.”

The babies, born nine weeks prematurely, have gone home one by one as each was judged healthy enough. Thomas, the firstborn, was the last released Monday amid the hoopla of a party at which he was joined by his parents and three sisters.

Not that the newest Dubells cared all that much.

Thomas, Lauren, Katie and Anne snoozed as about 100 hospital personnel, volunteers and reporters gazed at them lined up in order of birth. Nor did the foursome--who were identified by yellow Post-It notes stuck to the backs of their car seats--pay attention to the photographers snapping pictures.

Without intervention by fertility techniques, quadruplets occur once in every 500,000 pregnancies. For women who take such drugs, the incidence of quadruplets is three per 1,000 pregnancies, said Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg--a fertility specialist at the Tarzana hospital who treated Dubell--quoting a study by Merrell-National Laboratories, which produces fertility drugs.

Steinberg extracted from Dubell four ova, which she produced in one month because of the fertility drugs. Two were mixed with her husband’s sperm and immediately reinserted, and two were fertilized in a petri dish and inserted two days later.

Such multiple implants are a common technique in fertility clinics, ensuring against the usual failure of most of the implants, he said. In some women however, many or all of the implants survive, causing multiple births.

In a six-month period in 1985, four sets of quads were born in the Los Angeles area, including two sets in the San Fernando Valley and one in Glendale. Steinberg said Monday that he has two other patients currently pregnant with quadruplets.

Still and all, Gail Dubell and her husband, Steve, a 33-year-old aerospace engineer, said they were stunned when an ultrasound test during Gail’s third week of pregnancy revealed four fetuses.

“Luckily, I was lying on a table at the time,” Gail Dubell said. “I think Steve turned different colors.”

Gail Dubell was admitted to the hospital more than six weeks before the Cesarean birth, during which she and the babies were attended by 23 medical personnel.

The quadruplets had difficulty breathing and were put on respirators for part of their hospitalizations, Dr. Jim Banks said. There are no indications that they will have developmental or health problems, he said.

The quads, who all weighed less than 3 pounds, 3 ounces at birth, have gained weight. Thomas, the smallest, now weighs 4 pounds, 4 ounces.

The babies wear battery-run monitors that buzz if their breathing stops for more than 20 seconds or their heart rates dip below 80 beats per minute. Changing batteries in addition to diapers--and adjusting the apparatus--”multiplies by 10 times the amount of work that a parent has to do,” Banks said.

As if the work wasn’t enough already.

With just three of the babies home, the Dubells said they have lived in the nursery, bouncing out of bed three or four times a night for feedings. “Basically, all we did was feed them and change diapers,” Gail Dubell said.

But the Dubells said they couldn’t be happier.

They have received scores of gifts from friends and businesses. And while money may be tight, they have enough to get along on, they said.

Indeed, the adventurous couple have not ruled out the possibility of more children.

“We’re open to more,” said Gail Dubell. “We haven’t decided.”