These Babies Will Need a Rash of Diapers: How You Can Help the Hicks Quintuplets

If the average newborn goes through eight diapers a day, imagine the challenge before a Tyrone Township couple to keep their quintuplets clean and dry.

The math is mind-boggling, adding up to about 40 diapers a day, 280 a week, 1,200 a month  or 14,600 a year.

And then there’s the formula for the quintuplets, born Sept. 5 to Jessica and Robert Hicks.

You can help feed a diaper Tyrone Township’s most famous babies through a campaign on fundrazr.com. The couple started the campaign in response to inquires from people who want to help.

All five babies are now home from Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The Hicks’ two-bedroom, 1,100-square-foot home is burgeoning with baby swings, bouncers, infant carriers and stacks upon stacks of infant formula, diapers and everything else it takes to keep babies healthy and happy.

The couple are realizing their ranch house “wasn’t made for this,” Jessica told the newspaper. “We’re bursting at the seams.”

There’s room enough for three cribs. Emmett, who was the last of the five to come home after he underwent heart surgery on Sept. 30, has his own bed. The other four – Carol, Parker, Ryker and Nicole – double up, and their 3½-year-old sibling, Colton, has given up part of his room to storage.

Robert and Jessica aren’t sure how long they’ll be able to stay in the home, which they renovated in preparation for the babies’ arrival.

“We thought we’d be able to live here a while until they were mobile, but even now, their four bouncers are taking over the living room,” the quintuplets’ mom said.

Before Colton was born, Robert and Jessica tried unsuccessfully to conceive for a year before they sought fertility treatments. It took eight or nine attempts before Jessica became pregnant with her oldest son, but with the quintuplets, pregnancy resulted after only one treatment.

Throughout the pregnancy, the couple adjusted to the idea that they would be the parents of multiples – exams first indicated twins, then triplets and, finally, quintuplets.

Jessica said she loves her family and isn’t second-guessing the decision to have fertility treatments.