New Parents Can Count Their Blessings: 1, 2, 3 and 4

Labor Day takes on a whole new meaning when you’re holding your two newborn sons, and your two other newborns--a girl and a third boy--are sleeping peacefully in bassinets a few feet away.

“This is pretty weird that this is only half of them,” marveled Tricia Kelly, cradling Brendan Barry Kelly in her right arm and Baby B--soon to be either Jackson or Aidan--in the crook of her left arm.

Granted, Tricia Kelly didn’t have her quadruplets--touted by physicians as Ventura County’s first--on the holiday. And she didn’t actually go through labor, delivering instead on Sunday at Columbia Los Robles Hospital/Medical Center by caesarean section, the method physicians favor for multiple births of more than two.

But Monday’s holiday marked the beginning of a whole new era for Tricia Kelly and husband Ryan, both 35. Formerly known as the day when summer slips into fall and school bumps fun out of the way, Labor Day can be redefined as the day the real work begins for the Newbury Park couple.

To care for their more-than-a-handful of babies, Ryan is taking time off from his job as vice president of a Christian entertainment group, and Tricia is putting aside her musical career as a singer in the group.

“This is my job now,” she said, gazing down at half her brood.

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The couple has known since Tricia was just six weeks pregnant that a crowd was on the way. After more than five years of trying to have a baby, they decided to attempt in vitro fertilization. It worked on the first try. That gave them plenty of time to get over the initial shock and start preparing to be overwhelmed.

“We watched a couple of TV shows where they had quadruplets and quintuplets on,” Tricia Kelly said. “Oprah has had some on. We kept watching and thinking, ‘Oh my, that is going to be us.’

“But we firmly believe that God didn’t give us anything we can’t handle.”

The first order of business was distributing names to the babies, who doctors say are all healthy and remarkably large, considering their premature birth. All the names were already picked, but the Kellys still had two left to allot Monday.

Baby D was easy. He was the smallest at birth, weighing just 4 pounds, but he already looked enough like his maternal grandfather, Gary Barry, to take the name Brendan Barry.

Morgan Elizabeth was a given. The only girl in the set, she was also the biggest at birth, 5 pounds, 14 ounces.

But as of Monday afternoon, Baby B (5 pounds, 5 ounces) and Baby C (5 pounds, 8 ounces) were waiting to hear which one of them is going to be Jackson Ryan and which will be Aidan Macrae.

All the babies will stay in the neonatal intensive care unit at Los Robles for up to two weeks. Although the quadruplets are very healthy, chief neonatologist Magdy Ismail said they need to spend a little more time developing their strength.

“They were five weeks premature,” he explained. “And they were crowded in there. They need a little bit of recuperation.”

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The smallest babies, Brendan and Baby B, are the only two that their mother can hold right now. Because they were squeezed in by their brother and sister, the two babies stayed small. But ironically, the stress of being smaller helped them form better lung capacity, hence their ability to breathe easily on their own.

When the babies go home, they will share a room, two to a crib until they are bigger. Their grandmother, Marian Barry, will stay with the couple to help out, a task she seemed delighted about as she looked from bassinet to bassinet Monday.

“I’m just going to do whatever they tell me,” she said. “I’m just a gofer.”

Tricia Kelly said she is ready for the vigorous workout that comes with quadruplets, including trying to breast-feed all four. She has been basically immobile since Memorial Day because of the pregnancy, which ballooned her weight by 71 pounds and stretched her to the maximum. Her doctor, Raymond Poliakin, said her belly measured a full 17 inches beyond average pregnancies.

“She was very distended,” he said. “She was . . . big. They were ready. Very ready.”

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The couple plans to dress the children in a few matching outfits. But they want them to develop as individuals, so they won’t make much of a fuss over their quadruplet-ness. And as for Morgan Elizabeth, one girl in a sea of boys, her father said he isn’t worried about her taking a bruising from her many brothers.

“I have the feeling she will rule the roost,” Ryan Kelly said. “But I don’t think she’ll have any trouble on dates.”