The parents of the world's first set of surviving septuplets need a bin of 120 diapers, are helped by 60 volunteers around the clock, and make about 40 feeding bottles a day.
No problem, they say."People think it's chaos in here all the time, but really it isn't," mother Bobbi McCaughey, 29, told the Des Moines Sunday Register. "It's not chaotic. It's busy."
The seven infants have been home together since March 1 when the last of them, Alexis and Natalie, were released from the hospital 102 days after their birth Nov. 19.
They joined their mom and father, Kenny McCaughey, and big sister Mikayla, 2, and the rest of the septuplets - Kenneth, Nathan, Joel, Brandon and Kelsey - at home in a tiny house in Carlisle.
Since then, family and church friends work shifts round-the-clock to help care for the babies. A container holds 120 clean diapers, not nearly enough to get through a week.
The babies go to bed about 10 p.m. and usually sleep until 2 or 3 a.m.
"They don't wake each other up," Bobbi McCaughey said. "There was so much noise in the nursery in the hospital, and they've always been together. It's not a problem. Nathan can be whooping it up in the bedroom, and the rest of them sleep right through it."
On a normal day the overnight shift volunteer slips out at 6 a.m. The McCaugheys and their eight children have their house to themselves for two hours until the morning shift shows up at 8 a.m.
There's no need for an alarm clock. A hungry baby usually wakes up the McCaugheys.
"We feed whoever wakes up first," Bobbi McCaughey said. "Usually, they wake up one at a time, and everybody is up and fed in an hour and a half's time."
She makes 40 bottles that last between 24 and 36 hours. Each feeding and diaper change is recorded on a chart so volunteers and parents can keep track.
"Bobbi and I thought that maybe we would be able to do it alone," McCaughey said. "There just isn't any way. There's too much that needs to be done."