No easier, just different with quints

By TWILA DECKER

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 30, 2000

[Times photo: V. Jane Windsor 1997] When the quints were born, donations and volunteer babysitters rolled in to help parents Jeff and Gayle Nelson-Folkersen. That's all stopped, and the family's money problems are piling up.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Three-year-olds Rebekah and Ethan Nelson-Folkersen are playing dress-up.

Rebekah's the bride, wearing a wedding veil. Her brother Ethan's playing the sophisticated lady, wearing high-heeled shoes and carrying a pink purse.

Seth is hammering on his toolbox.

Naomi is in her favorite position: resting on the back of the couch. Arielle, meanwhile, is staying quiet, doing her own thing.

"Naomi, please take your finger out of your mouth," says Gayle Nelson-Folkersen, who is sitting on the couch, Ethan now behind her.

"You know you have to get down now, Ethan," she says. Then, Seth decides to pull his mother's long hair. "You're hurting me," she says.

Three years have passed since Nelson-Folkersen gave birth to the quintuplets, two years since we profiled the family in an article called "A Day in the (Frenetic) Life." When the article was published on March 29, 1998, all five babies were healthy and in diapers; dad Jeff Nelson-Folkersen was working at a Tampa computer systems company; and Gayle Nelson-Folkersen was hoping to someday return to the Lutheran seminary where she was studying to become a minister.

Now, Jeff is closing down a business he started and will soon be out of work, the rented house in St. Petersburg feels a bit cramped, money problems are piling up and the seminary seems a faraway dream.

But the quints, believed to be St. Petersburg's first, are healthy, for the most part. The smallest, Arielle, who was hooked to life support, has asthma.

The toddlers all have big blue eyes. Two are brunettes. Three are blonds.

[Times photo: Cherie Diez] Gayle Nelson-Folkersen kisses the bride, her daugh ter Rebekah, who was playing dress-up. Despite the challenges, Mrs. Nelson-Folkersen says, she wouldn't change a thing.

Seth is the leader, first at everything from walking to potty training. Naomi is the dramatic one. Rebekah likes to cuddle. Ethan is tall and reserved. Arielle is a loner.

They're all talking and potty trained now, although accidents happen.

"It was the most frustrating thing in my life," Mrs. Nelson-Folkersen says of potty training. "I had five potties. When one would get on, they all had to get on it."

She says she has learned to let things go.

She has taken down the curtains. "They were swinging from them."

She can no longer carry three of them at a time.

"I can't do two. You're too heavy," she says, as a third tries to climb into her arms. "They get jealous. If I pick up one, they all want to be picked up."

She quit making their five tiny beds long ago and basically has given up on tidying up for visitors.

Even the bathroom door has been tied open. "They clogged the toilet three times," she says, as Rebekah returns nude from the bathroom.

"I did diarrhea," she announces to her mom and visitors.

"It doesn't get any easier," Mrs. Nelson-Folkersen says. "It just gets different. "It is very stressful. There are times when I have to walk outside and watch them from the window," she says. Or, "I take a pillow into the bathroom and scream into it. It's very cathartic."

The catharsis is necessary. The army of volunteers who arrived when the babies were born is mostly gone now. The donations have vanished, too.

The kids have outgrown most of the donated clothes, which went up to 2T. The family and the babies are vegans, which means the kids drink only soy milk, which costs about $300 a month. She tried to switch them to cheaper rice milk, she says, but they don't like it.

As she talks, bill collectors are calling for payment. She says she would like to buy a house, but their credit is shot. "No one would take a chance on us," she says.

This week, she says, is particularly hard because her husband just found out that he has to shut down the computer networking business he started when the babies were 18 months old. She's not sure how he is going to support them.

"I did my crying yesterday," she says. "But I know God doesn't close a door without opening another one."

Still, Mrs. Nelson-Folkersen says she wouldn't change a thing, except maybe to stock up on soy milk ahead of time.

"I was 40 and told I wouldn't have any chance at having a family," she says. "Now, I have all this."

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