A Staten Island couple got exactly what they wanted for Christmas: five healthy, newborn babies.
Kevin and Jamie Ferrante welcomed their new bundles of joy into the world yesterday at around 1:30 a.m. at Staten Island University Hospital – the medical center’s first set of quintuplets.
“To get to this point is unbelievable, we’re really ecstatic,” the proud new papa, an operating engineer with the construction union, told The Post.
Amazingly, the four girls and a boy were delivered via cesarean section within six minutes, according to a hospital spokesman.
All of the tots, who were born more than two months premature, are being closely monitored in incubators in the neo-natal ICU unit and will have to stay there for several more weeks.
“I’ll be here everyday, and then, when they are ready to come home, we have a lot of family and friends really willing to help,” Jamie, 32, a manager at a children’s clothing store, told the Staten Island Advance.
Amanda Frances only weighs 1 pound, 8 ounces, while her brother, Matthew Sabatino, is the heaviest of the new family at 2 pounds 4 1/4 ounces. Sisters Allesia Louise, Ella LilliAna and Emily Ann fall in between.
The Ferrantes were trying to have children for more than a year and a half and when they discovered in July that the fertility drugs were an overwhelming success.
Their doctors weren’t nearly as thrilled.
“In the beginning, they recommended that we reduce the amount of babies, but we decided not to do that,” Kevin said. “We left it in God’s hands.”
But the worries of the high-risk pregnancy, which included Jamie being hospitalized since Dec. 1, turned to all smiles yesterday when they were able to see their children.
“It feels really good because a lot of doctors said it wouldn’t happen,” said Kevin. “A lot of doctors wouldn’t take us on as patients.”