BIRTHDAY BABIES BURBANK QUADS HEARTY AT FIRST PARTY.

Byline: Donna Huffaker Staff Writer

BURBANK - Happy birthday. Times four.

Dressed in their best, the Whiteman quadruplets - Garrett, Cole, Chad and Katy - cooed and giggled Thursday at their first birthday party.

The first set of quadruplets ever born at Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys was back for a party and armloads of gifts - prompting their mom, Colleen, to say again, ``We really need a larger van.'' Every square inch of the family's seven-passenger van is occupied by car seats, baby bags and baby toys.

Devilishly, she also noted that a larger van would accommodate more children - never too many for the 40-year-old part-time bus driver.

``I absolutely love this. I love being a mom,'' she said, sporting a yellow T-shirt with handprints that read ``Children First.''

Her 61-year-old husband, Dick, a Burbank Public Works Department employee, is a bit less enthusiastic about increasing their eight-person family.

``I say I want to do this again, and Dick just grunts,'' she said, noting that she and her husband still have six frozen embryos.

All told, the Whitemans' home on Reese Place, under reconstruction since the quads' birth Aug. 26, 1999, accommodates the babies, an adopted toddler, Colleen's 12-year-old daughter, two dogs, a cat and four birds.

Until the rebuilding is done, carpeting and drywall, covering tufts of yellow insulation, are spread across the wooden floorboards. Fitting in cribs and beds, the family doubles up in all finished space - using the camper, too.

``It'll be finished before too long,'' Dick Whiteman said in the same calm, stress-free tone that defines both parents.

Determined to have a large family, the Whitemans began the process to adopt Jeffrey in 1998. Colleen suffered two miscarriages, and so the couple started the in-vitro fertilization process and took fertility medication. Five eggs were implanted, and four survived.

Born 12 weeks prematurely, each of the nonidentical quads weighed less than three pounds.

Today, Cole tips the scales at 13 pounds. Chad weighs the most at 15 pounds, with Garrett at 14 pounds and Katy at 12.

It's unusual to hear Colleen tick off the quads' names in any order other than Garrett, Cole, Chad and Katy. That's the way they came into the world, and that's the way their mother tackles breakfast, lunch, dinner, bottles, diapers and baths. By the end of a day, that totals about 40 trips up and down the wooden staircase.

Until last month, the only people helping her make those trips were her husband and her preteen daughter, Bianca. Enter Victoria Kpekpe, who helps the Whitemans up to 128 hours a month through a state program. She will assist through December.

``Ask me how she did it before me. I don't know,'' said Kpekpe, bottle- feeding Katy and watching Chad pull his belly across the carpeted play area while the meatloaf she prepared for dinner earlier that day cooked in the kitchen.

Barring fertility drugs, quadruplet births are very uncommon, said Maha Elmeligy, a neonatologist for Valley Presbyterian, adding the chances are about one in 100,000. With fertility medication, it's a crapshoot, she said.

In fact, if four embryos survive implantation, obstetricians usually reduce the number to two - to give the remaining fetuses greater likelihood of survival, she said.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, out of more than 3.9 million births in 1998, 627 were quad births. Quad births have been increasing annually, with just 229 a decade ago.

Multiple-birth babies must be watched closely into school age. Cooing and smiling are no guarantees of regular development, Elmeligy said.

On average, the Whiteman babies use 120 diapers a week - cloth diapers picked up and delivered by a diaper service - and drink 12 bottles of formula a day. All the babies hold their own bottles now - one less thing the busy mom has to do. Not that she feels overwhelmed at all.

``I train them. They don't train me. You can't get all stressed out because then they feel it and they get fussy,'' she said.

The question she gets asked most? ``Are they yours?'' Colleen said. Smiling, she said every errand with the babies along takes extra time because strangers stop to take a peek.

Her husband, who has children by a previous marriage and just became a grandfather for the second time this week, works for the city as a lead building maintenance worker and spends almost every lunch hour at home.

Earlier this week, he fed his adopted son, Jeffrey, 2 - 28 days younger than his first grandchild - a sandwich and surmised that the construction will be mostly done by Christmas. The cabinetry, however, will have to wait for the next income tax refund, he said.

So for now, the 150 jars of baby peas, baby carrots, baby potatoes and baby applesauce are stacked like a brick wall on a kitchen table.

``I buy in bulk,'' Colleen Whiteman said.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) Their adopted brother, Jeffrey, 2, fascinates Burbank's Whiteman quadruplets - from left, Chad, Garrett, Katy and Cole - who will turn 1 year old on Saturday.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer

(2 -- color) Their mom, Colleen, and Pooh Bear hold the Whiteman quads at a prebirthday party where Katy, in a pretty dress, gets excited.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer

Box: FOUR TIMES THE FUN