Photo courtesy of Pipestone Star Freddy and Rebecca Dalle, of Jasper, added quadruplets to their family earlier this year. Pictured are (top, left to right) Rebecca, Elyse, Freddy, (middle) Rylan holding Ryker, (bottom, left to right) Charlotte holding Caroline and Emma holding Catherine.

The Freddy and Rebecca Dalle family, of Jasper, nearly doubled in size on Feb. 6 when Rebecca gave birth to quadruplets. Ryker, Elyse, Catherine and Caroline joined their older siblings Rylan, 10, Emma, 6, and Charlotte, 3, making a family of nine.

The Dalles found out they were having quadruplets when they went in for Rebecca’s eight-week appointment. They were shocked.

“In all honesty, when Becky first showed me the ultrasound pictures, I was shocked and terrified,” Freddy said. “I thought she was joking. I wasn’t expecting or planning on having more than one, let alone four.”

He said it didn’t seem real until the quadruplets were born.

Rebecca said the quadruplets occurred spontaneously, without any fertility treatments. According to the National Institutes of Health, the occurrence of spontaneous quadruplet pregnancies is very rare with a “prevalence of 1 in 512,000 to 1 in 677,000 births.”

There has been some history of multiples on Rebecca’s dad’s side of the family, with twins and triplets. Rebecca said she and Freddy met the triplets at a family reunion last summer. At the time, they knew she was pregnant, but hadn’t yet found out that there were four babies.

“Freddy and I were walking back and we were joking like, “Oh, my gosh, that would be so hard to have triplets,'” she said.

Rebecca said she was nervous during the pregnancy because a C-section was scheduled and she’d never had one before, but she described her pregnancy as “really smooth.” When the babies were born at 33 weeks at Sanford in Sioux Falls, Elyse and Ryker weighed about 5 pounds, and Catherine and Caroline weighed about 4 pounds. Rebecca said Catherine and Caroline are considered twins because they came from the same egg.

“There were three eggs,” she said. “Elyse and Ryker were their own and the twins were the other one and it split.”

After they were born, the babies spent some time in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Rebecca said the girls were placed on a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine for one day and all of them were tube fed for a short time. Then one by one they started to come home — Elyse after 16 days in the NICU, Catherine and Caroline at 17 days, and Ryker at 23 days.

Sleep has been a challenge since the babies came home, as has sickness. Rebecca said that in March, the twins were taken to the hospital in Sioux Falls after they each stopped breathing. It started with Catherine. Rebecca’s mom, Linda, was feeding her and she coughed and then stopped breathing. They tried to wake her, but couldn’t and they called for an ambulance. Catherine was breathing again by the time the ambulance arrived, but she was taken to Pipestone County Medical Center and from there to Sioux Falls. Rebecca said Caroline had been “a little off that day too” and while she was driving to Sioux Falls with her, she stopped breathing.

“I made it maybe a half a mile outside of town, right on 23 there and I heard her stop breathing, so I pulled over and I ripped her out of the car seat, tried to get her to wake up — she wasn’t waking up, so I hightailed it back to the hospital,” Rebecca said.

Caroline was ultimately transported to Sioux Falls by helicopter.

“It was horrible,” Rebecca said of the incident. “I still picture it every night.”

Once at the hospital in Sioux Falls, Catherine was put on oxygen for a while. Caroline was intubated and was starting to become septic. Her hemoglobin was low and she had a blood transfusion. Both girls recovered and were sent home with caffeine to stimulate their brains and help them keep breathing. They now have apnea monitors that will sound an alarm if they stop breathing or their heart rates get too high.

Tests were done to find out what caused the complications that night in March and it turned out to be a common cold. Rebecca said she and Freddy didn’t realize how complex premature babies are, but after that experience, the family now takes extra precautions to protect the babies from illness. All four of the babies have been well since then.

The Dalles said having four infants is chaotic, but that the chaos is slowly becoming the new normal for them. The family has received an outpouring of support to help them adjust to that new normal, including from their church, St. Paul Lutheran in Pipestone. The church has a giving tree each Christmas and made the Dalles the beneficiaries in December.

“It was wonderful,” Rebecca said. “We got diapers, we got gift cards, we got … you name it. It just helped tremendously.”

More recently, a woman from their church started a diaper drive. Rebecca said they now have a stockpile of diapers and they’ve not had to buy a box of diapers for the quadruplets yet. Others have also provided gift cards and other items.

“The amount of people who have given us gifts and thoughts and prayers is just a huge blessing,” Rebecca said. “There are people who I don’t even know who have given and it has been absolutely wonderful. We are forever grateful for the community. It’s been amazing.”

She said their family has been very supportive and helpful as well, including their three older children.

Rebecca is originally from Ihlen and Freddy is from Marshall. She works from home in the mortgage field and he makes wind tower components. They moved to Jasper from Sioux Falls in 2019 because they wanted to raise their kids in a smaller, slower-paced town.

“It’s been great,” Rebecca said. “You can let the kids go outside and play and don’t have too many concerns really.”