Skip navigation

Cheaper by the half-dozen? Expecting sextuplets

A young Arizona couple is making room for six babies

NBC video
One mom expecting sextuplets
April 27: Cheaper by the half dozen? TODAY's Meredith Vieira talks to a couple who are getting ready for six little new ones.

Today Show Parenting

Special feature
Tales of survival
From a gator attack victim who got a high-tech helping hand to a man who was struck by lightning, learn how these people cheated death.
The Week in...  
  
Image: A security guard stands in front of columns of containers
Reuters
  The Week in Pictures
From a community effort to put out a fire to snow-covered vineyards, a look at some of the week’s most compelling images.
83818431
AFP - Getty Images
  Week in Sports Pictures
Dogs on the ski slopes, motorcycles in the harbor and more madness from the sports world.
Image: Britney Spears
AP
  The Week in celebrity sightings
Britney gets her Bambi, Cruise and Beckham do Broadway, Oprah plants a tree and more.
Washington Post
  Animal Tracks
Find a hungry flying squirrel, a slip-sliding penguin and more eye candy for animal lovers.
By John Springer
TODAYshow.com contributor
TODAY
updated 1:55 p.m. ET April 27, 2007

After years of trying to become pregnant and two miscarriages, Jenny and Bryan Masche decided to start fertility treatments.

The Arizona couple was surprised and happy to learn last year that Jenny Masche, 32, was once again expecting after her very first artificial insemination — a relatively inexpensive and simple procedure.

But when the ultrasounds started to come in and the couple's doctor began seeing a clearer picture, the couple realized that their dream of a large family could be realized sooner than they had hoped.

Story continues below ↓
advertisement | your ad here

Jenny Masche is pregnant with sextuplets.

"It is very surreal. And it is very hard to imagine there are six babies growing in me," Jenny Masche told TODAY Friday from her hospital bed in Phoenix.

Doctors say mother and babies are doing well at 24 weeks, and expect her to deliver at 28 weeks, based on the babies' development. (34 weeks is considered full-term.) Jenny Masche said she hopes to be able to hang on another seven or eight weeks before delivering the infants as the more time they spend in the womb the better.

In the meantime, Bryan Masche, 28, is traveling back and forth two hours each way from Lake Havasu City to the hospital in Phoenix where his wife is on bed rest.

A pharmaceutical company representative based at home, he is spending his spare time putting together cribs and trying to figure how eight people are going to live in one small house.

"I don't think you can really prepare to have six kids and bring six kids home at one time," the father-to-be told TODAY host Meredith Vieira. "You can make your best effort, but I don't know how anyone can do that."

Three shy of a baseball team
The Masches plan to expand their house and add on two bathrooms, one for the girls and one for the boys. Jenny is expecting three of each.

"We used to tease that we are going to have a baseball team. We're not quite there, thank God," Jenny Masche said.

"I don't know if we'll have those three to make the baseball team," her husband added. "I think we're done after this."

The couple has yet to decide on names. The babies are currently referred to as A, B, C, D, E and F so doctors can tell them apart.

"We're working on it. It's kind of hard," Jenny said "You've got come up with six names that are your favorite. You don't want to get some babies' names that you love, and some babies' names that you are like, 'Oh, I couldn't think of anything else.' "

Visit the family's web site at www.maschemiracles.com.

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive