It's never a dull moment growing up with multiple siblings, and the Waldrop family know just that.
On December 11, Eric and Courtney Waldrop welcomed Rivers, Rayne, Rawlings, Blu, Tag and Layke into the world, and people can't get enough of the newborn sextuplets. The parents have jumped from a family of five to 11, as the babies join the couple's other three sons, nine-year-old Saylor and five-year-old twins Wales and Bridge.
"It's an amazingly joyful feeling to have all six babies at home with us. Our lives have been forever changed," the couple wrote on Facebook. "We are blessed beyond words and so excited to get life started with these sweet little miracles from above."
The sextuplets were born just under 30 weeks gestation at Alabama's Huntsville Hospital, where they weighed from 2 lbs. and 4 oz. to 2 lbs. and 14 oz. It was there that they had their first photo shoot, which will be featured in Huntsville Hospital's magazine.
"I'm used to wrangling with kids"”kids are my strong point, so I can get down on their level and be silly and goofy," Sargent said. "It wasn't bad, but it took several people to get the whole thing together."
According to PEOPLE, the newborns were delivered by Cesarean section by an extensive team of about 40 labor and delivery nurses, neonatologists, anesthesiologists, maternal fetal medicine specialists and surgical assistants.
While all the babies were born in perfect health, Eric and Courtney had dealt with several miscarriages before they had their firstborn.
Before they became parents of nine children, Courtney struggled to get pregnant, and eventually decided to use fertility treatments to help conceive the couple's twins.
While the Eric and Courtney originally tried to have a successful third pregnancy with the help of third-party treatments, they suffered a miscarriage early last year.
They decided to return to fertility treatments, but weren't expecting to have such a high number of multiples.
"I was scared to death," Courtney said. "I'm a smaller framed girl, and my first thoughts were on how I was going to successfully get six kids here without something happening to them or me. There was a lot of fear. We didn't know what to do or think."
Doctors told the couple they could have a "selective reduction," which would reduce the number of fetuses in her womb, but they were hesitant about the procedure.
"We are strong in our faith, but you never know how you're going to feel when you're actually in those shoes," she says. "When we let it go and turned it all over to [God], those fears"”though we know the risks are still there"”were lifted from us."
Luckily, they were all born in perfect health, and Sargent returned to photograph the sextuplets with the rest of their siblings in a series of beautiful pictures.
Do you know anyone who's given birth to multiples?
[H/T: PEOPLE]
