Their mother wept with joy, their father grinned and their grandfather said he couldn't praise the Lord enough.
After 3 1/2 months in the hospital, the last two of the McCaughey septuplets went home Sunday to join their famously large family and the 60 volunteers who help take care of them."It's great, finally, everybody under one roof," said Kenny McCaughey, carrying a bundled-up daughter Alexis in one hand and Natalie in the other before heading to the family's small three-bedroom house in Carlisle, 10 miles south of Des Moines.
The babies' mother, Bobbi McCaughey, thought about all the trips she had made to Blank Children's Hospital to visit Natalie and Alexis.
"I'm very happy," Bobbi McCaughey said. "It'll be weird not to come up every day."
The birth of the septuplets on Nov. 19 was the first of its kind in the United States since 1985, when a California woman delivered seven babies, three of whom survived.
The McCaugheys' four boys and three girls were born about nine weeks before their Jan. 25 due date. Normally, doctors hope that babies born prematurely will be ready to go home around the date they would have been born if the pregnancy had been carried to term.
The other septuplets had already gone home, starting with firstborn Kenneth on Jan. 3 and Joel, Brandon, Kelsey and Nathan later that month. Natalie and Alexis had not been eating as aggressively as their brothers and sister, so they were hospitalized longer, family spokesman Wes Yoder said.
Natalie weighed just 2 pounds, 10 ounces at birth, but she is up to 7 pounds, 10 ounces. Alexis, who was 2 pounds, 11 ounces at birth, now weighs 5 pounds, 11 ounces.
The McCaugheys brought Kelsey and the boys to the hospital, protected from snow in pink and blue blankets, before everyone went home Sunday. Big sister Mikayla and Bobbi McCaughey's parents also were on hand.
"We brought them here for a small reunion," Kenneth McCaughey said. "It's part of being a family."
Meanwhile, the hospital in Saudi Arabia where septuplets were born in January has threatened to call the police if the parents don't take their babies home.
Four of the seven babies were issued discharge slips last week but their parents say they are not ready to take them home. Doctors said Sunday the hospital nursery is overcrowded and they are running out of patience.