West Hills : Quintuplets’ Baptism a Time for Reflection

The Quezada quintuplets were baptized Sunday, providing some ceremony and celebration for their parents, whose hectic daily schedule has not let up since the infants’ birth nearly six months ago.

“It’s hot, and everyone wants to help,” said their mother, Marcella Quezada, taking a break from changing the babies out of their formal church attire into more comfortable clothes.

Quezada had decided to put off the baptism for a few months, hoping the quints would not need as much attention. But the strategy did not entirely work. Not only was the summer heat adding to their discomfort, but the babies have also started teething.

“Other than that,” Quezada said, “it’s been very nice.”

After the baptism at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in Los Angeles, the Quezadas hosted a reception for family and friends in the back yard of their West Hills home, with white balloons and flower centerpieces decorating 15 tables. A white-frosted cake was decorated with the names Raymond and Andrew in blue icing and Kimberly, Patricia and Tiffany in pink.

A few guests were impressed with how calm and organized the mother was. But Barbara Lord and Jane Parker, nurses in the pre-term birth prevention program at Kaiser Permanente in Woodland Hills, said they were accustomed to seeing such good spirits from Quezada.

“She was in bed for 12 weeks, and you never heard a complaint out of her,” Parker said. She simply did whatever she could do to have a healthy pregnancy, Parker and Lord said.

Quezada had started planning for her children’s lives early on. She asked longtime friend Martha Serrano of Rialto to be a godmother even before she was pregnant. Serrano turned out to be one of 10 godparents.

Serrano is now godmother to Kimberly. “She’s the smallest of them,” Serrano said. “She’s the tiniest. They’re all different. They all have their own personalities.”

Quezada recruited her own godmother, Maria Wasiak of Las Vegas, to be godmother to Andrew.

“He’s beautiful,” Wasiak said. “He’s the biggest one. I love him. They are all happy, cute kids.”

But they still keep their mother busy.

“I think some days it gets easier and some days it’s crazier,” Quezada said.