PHARR — It’s been about a week since the Silva family was finally able to be all together at home: Mom Karina, Dad Adrian, and their three girls and two boys — quintuplets born at DHR Health on Nov. 29, 2021.
Now 2 months old, the quints — small but mighty — cooed and cried softly Thursday afternoon as mom and dad took turns rocking them in their arms in side by side rocking chairs while their siblings enjoyed a post-lunch nap tucked into car seats at the Silva’s cozy apartment.
Born at just 30 weeks, the quintuplets came into the world just one minute apart from each other.
First came Rogelio Adrian at 6:29 a.m., followed by Leticia Maria, who is named after both of her grandmothers. Then came Victoria Isabel, Vanessa Anahi, and finally, Gabriel Eduardo.
But more than two months premature, the babies needed the specialized care of the neonatal intensive care unit before they could go home.
The two brothers, Rogelio and Gabriel, were the first to come home in mid-January. Then little Victoria, then Letty. On Jan. 27, the last quintuplet — Vanessa — at last joined her brothers and sisters.
With all of them now home, the Silvas, both 31 years old, have taken to caring for the quints on a rotating schedule. They tag team feedings every three hours, and share the load on diapers and naps and more.
On Thursday afternoon, the quints had just polished off lunch — drinking 3 ounces of milk at once now, Adrian boasted — and had settled into an afternoon nap.
In the kitchen, Grandma Maria Alanis, Adrian’s mother, stood ready to lend a hand. But, save for the occasional cry for a misplaced pacifier, the infants slept peacefully, warm and content as mom and dad shared the story of how they came to be.
Adrian and Karina went to high school together in Ciudad de Allende, Nuevo Leon, though Adrian wouldn’t remember that until years later.
Karina said she saw him in school and took a photo of him, but then never saw him again.
Adrian eventually moved to Dallas, but would occasionally return to Mexico to visit his family. It was during one such visit five years later that the pair crossed paths again.
“Five years later, when we meet at church, she was like, ‘Hey. Do you remember me?’ Adrian said of that chance encounter at a church Christmas party.
“No,” Adrian said he responded with a laugh.
But then Karina pulled out the photograph she had taken of him all those years before and showed it to him, “and we started talking,” Adrian said.
They dated for just two months before making their relationship official, Adrian said.
Twelve years later, to the day, the pair sat cradling their babies in their Pharr home.
But the journey to becoming parents hadn’t been easy. Married for seven years, the couple had tried for years to get pregnant. They eventually turned to in vitro fertilization, trying every year for four cycles without success.
They endured a miscarriage, then they took a break in 2020, once COVID-19 began to sweep the globe. But last year, they decided to give it another go.
It worked. Karina became pregnant.
They always knew that multiples were a possibility, so they weren’t too shocked when a routine ultrasound showed multiple amniotic sacs floating in Karina’s belly and reflected in black and white on the screen.
“We knew we could have multiples, but the probability of that was 20%,” Karina said, in Spanish.
But it was unclear just how many babies she was carrying. The ultrasound showed five amniotic sacs, but only three of them looked big enough to the doctor, Adrian said.
The doctor said two of the sacs were empty, and that the couple would likely have triplets.
But that changed at Karina’s next ultrasound.
“Then the next month, we went, there were four babies. The other bag has a little baby in it. There was a heart beating,” Adrian said. And again, the doctor said the fifth sac was empty.
Like other parents-to-be, the Silvas had begun planning for the arrival of their babies. A gender reveal showed there were two boys and two girls.
But 22 weeks into the pregnancy, Karina went in for another sonogram, this time with a specialist in high-risk multiples pregnancies.
“And she told us, ‘How many babies did they tell you there were?’” the doctor asked the Silvas.
Four, they responded.
“And she’s like, ‘Surprise, there’s five babies!’” Adrian recalled.
The fifth baby — which Adrian and Karina think was Vanessa — had hidden behind her brothers and sisters.
Doctors at DHR had never seen quintuplets before, and as such, took a cautious approach with Karina’s pregnancy. She spent 15 days resting in the hospital before they were delivered at 30 weeks.
The whole delivery process took about 45 minutes, the parents said. Afterward, they had two hospital rooms to themselves — Karina in one room with two babies, and Adrian in another with the other three.
Now that all five are home, the Silvas say they are thankful to God for giving them five healthy babies.
“The best part? Just to know them, be with them and take care of them,” Adrian said.
