Love Multiplied by Four

It has become a sacred ritual for Casey Dahl-Ponce - going camping every year for Mother’s Day, and come Sunday morning, waking up with her four children on top of her where she has let them fall asleep the night before. This Mother’s Day was no different.

“I let them fall asleep on top of me because I feel like I didn’t get to hold them in the NICU long enough, so I take in moments like this that I can,” says Casey.

Those moments are a quiet reminder of a time when holding her children—Serena, Aaron, Maverick, and Penelope—was a rare and precious event. The quadruplets spent a combined 317 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital at Hackensack University Medical Center after they were born.

The birth of quadruplets is still a rare occurrence with estimates that between 120 to 150 sets are born annually in the United States. At Hackensack University Medical Center, there were 87 sets of twins born in 2025, one set of triplets and no sets of quadruplets. There were only 128 quad births in the country in 2023, the last year for which U.S. statistics are available. According to the New Jersey Department of Health, 12 groups of children were born in the state that same year.

As a matter of fact, the last set of quadruplets born at Hackensack University Medical Center were Serena, Aaron, Maverick, and Penelope, in 2022, when five sets of triplets were also born.

The quiet hum of that NICU stay has been replaced by the joyful noise of childhood. The Ponce kids are taking karate, doing gymnastics, riding dirt bikes, and, as of last week, kickball. Those fragile early days have given way to that incredible energy that kids have when they are having fun.

For Casey and her husband, Jose Ponce, that contrast coupled with the love of their children and all who cared for them at Joseph M. Sanzari inspires a simple philosophy - the love you receive is equal to the love you give. Feeling they received immeasurable compassionate care from what they call “the village” at the hospital, they are preparing once again to pay it forward, and will again later this year participate with their families and friends in the annual NICUSTRONG walk.

“It is very meaningful for us to give back, and not just because we want to say thank you, and we can’t say thank you enough,” says Casey. “It’s that we want to make a difference in the lives of other NICU families. We get to do this while honoring the people who cared for our children.”

Last year 75 of their family members and friends from as far as Florida traveled to Van Saun Park in Paramus for the annual walk. The Dahl-Ponce team was the largest of the 49 teams who participated. Together, all the families who took part raised more than $43,000, bringing the total raised for the NICU over the past eight years to more than half a million dollars.

“It will be our fifth year celebrating with other NICUSTRONG families. I love seeing the nurses and the doctors that took care of my babies when I couldn’t,” says Casey. “Motherhood after the NICU teaches you that love is multiplied in every direction. It's the overwhelming love you feel when your four children pile on you on Mother's Day morning, and it's the profound gratitude you give back to the village that made this moment possible."

“We wish all our NICU mothers and their families a beautiful Mother's Day. We are proud to be that village that the Dahl-Ponce family refers to,” says Lisa Eiland, MD, lead of Neonatalogy, at Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital. “The love truly does multiply in every direction, inspiring a legacy of gratitude and giving back that strengthens children and families, and the NICU team."