There is nothing tougher for a father than being away from his wife during labor. A father wants be there in person, to hold his wife and see his newborn delivered into the world.
For this army father posted in South Korea, he got the best next thing: being with his wife virtually, using FaceTime to watch his wife give birth to their four new babies via C-section.
The couple already had a 23-month-old named Alice when an ultrasound revealed that they will be having four new arrivals, doubling the family count to seven.
READ: Giving Birth is Harder than Running a Marathon
“We wanted a big family, but we thought we’d be able to spread it out more,” Mary Pat Burch said. “Instead we got an instant upgrade.”
Her husband Tony Burch is an Army engineer stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. After he was deployed to South Korea in September, his wife moved with Alice to her hometown of Tinley Park, Illinois, to live with her parents and await the babies’ arrival.
Mary gave birth to two three boys, Henry (3 pounds, 8 ounces), Nathaniel (3 pounds, 6 ounces), Samuel (3 pounds, 2 ounces), and one girl, Molly (2 pounds 14 ounces).
READ: The stages of labor explained
“He could see the babies as they were taken to the warmers, and he got the rundown on how they were doing and how much they weighed,” Mary Pat Burch said.
Four days later, Tony was able to meet the babies in person when he returned on a special overseas trip from South Korea. He is set to return to the U.S. full-time in June.
Mary was discharged from after four days, but her quadruplets will need to be monitored in intensive care, and they will likely stay there for several more weeks.
Kim Carmignani, director of the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, nevertheless, was pleased that “the quadruplets are beautifully the same size, which is great…We don’t like to see one growing more rapidly than the others because this can cause systemic problems.”
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