How Does Taking Care of Eight Small Kids Even Work?
Bobbi and Kenny’s life changed forever with the birth of the septuplets. They had to become more inventive, more organized, find additional sources of income such as paid public appearances by Kenny and writing a column for American Baby by Bobbi, adding extra locks to the doors so the little ones couldn’t escape, and paying hundreds of dollars a month in health insurance.
In an interview for NBC when the septuplets turned 4, the parents offered lots of details of what it means to be the parents of eight children under the age of 5. They mentioned how it would become increasingly difficult for them to stop the little ones from climbing, to fall, and to hide in the most unexpected corners of their big house. Bobbi and Kenny discussed how difficult it was not to worry about the safety of the kids every waking moment.
THE MCCAUGHEY SEPTUPLETS AT HOME (Photo by Ambassador/Sygma/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
Bobbi said ” “ You can’t live your life being paranoid, either. You know? I mean sometimes when I go to bed at night, I lay there thinking, ‘Now if we have a fire, how are we going to get out of here?’ You know, if we can’t get out the windows, then we have to go out on the deck upstairs and go out in the garage, and Kenny gets down, and I drop the kids to him one-by-one. And I go through this in my head over and over and over. And I finally have to say, ‘quit it and go to sleep.’ I mean you have to reach a point where you have to trust that God’s going to take care of you .”
Even though even though Bobbi mentioned at one point that she would have liked to add yet another baby over eight existing ones when the septuplets turned five, she told NBC that she wouldn’t have another one at that point, because she couldn’t imagine her going back to the diapers and the cribs.