WOMEN RISE TO CHALLENGES; COUPLE ENJOYS HOUSE FULL OF KIDS.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

This won't be Kimberly Jacobsson's first Mother's Day, but the house was a lot emptier last year when her family was limited to husband Martin and son Ethan. That was BQ: before the quadruplets.

Now, you could say the Jacobssons are in seventh heaven. Kimberly and Martin, both 32, credit their adjustment - from a three-person household to seven mouths to feed - to their strong faith and lots of help from fellow church parishioners.

That's not to overlook a more mundane factor: namely, a strategy of order and routine that makes it possible to care for 4-month-old Hope, Emma, Natalie and Sophia with sanity intact. In practical terms, mom and dad have devised a system that keeps the girls on the same timetable, not four different ones.

``They're all on a very strict schedule. They sleep between 11 and 12 hours a night,'' Kimberly enthused. ``Isn't that awesome?''

As any new parent will attest, getting uninterrupted overnight slumber from one baby - much less four of them - is no small feat. The Jacobssons reached that ``milestone'' about five weeks ago, Kimberly said.

There's nothing better for an exhausted mother and father than when their newborn spares them the middle-of-the-night feedings and diaper changes. ``Once they started sleeping through the night, there was light at the end of the tunnel,'' Kimberly said. ``I thought (caring for quads) was going to be such a nightmare, but it's not. God gives people wisdom.''

And the church gave them some helping hands. The couple belong to Vineyard Christian Fellowship, and members of the Santa Clarita congregation have pitched in with baby sitting since the quadruplets were born.

``We had a lot of help in the beginning,'' Martin said, crediting a woman from their church whom they hired to come over three nights a week from midnight to 6 a.m. That shift covered, the new father could get his sleep on work days and Kimberly could reserve her energy for the daytime hours.

``Now, with multiples, I'm getting more sleep than some people with one (baby),'' said Kimberly, whose maiden name was Phillips when she was a Hart High School student in the 1980s.

Martin's relatives all live in his native Sweden, but Kimberly has family nearby - her mother in Agua Dulce and her brother in Arcadia. His sister visited in April. ``My mom and dad are coming in September,'' Martin said, noting that his parents had five kids - and now, so does he.

Although most of the couple's attention is focused on the quads and 3-year-old Ethan, Martin said they've also learned these past four months to carve out some time for each other and their marriage. ``We still have some people come over to baby sit so we can go out on a date,'' he said.

The quads were born by Caesarean section Jan. 7 at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Woodland Hills. Kimberly, who took a fertility drug, had spent three months resting in bed to assure carrying the babies - who are fraternal, not identical twins - as close to full term as possible.

The girls' birth weights ranged from 3 pounds, 5 ounces to 4 pounds, 7 ounces - with Sophia the heaviest and Natalie the lightest. Now Emma and Natalie share a crib because they are the smallest of the four, and their sisters occupy the other two cribs in the Jacobssons' three-bedroom home.

The hospital discharged Kimberly two days after giving birth. ``I couldn't wait to get home. I didn't care that I was in pain,'' she said.

Hope and Sophia spent their first week of life in the Kaiser nursery, and about a week after they went home, Natalie joined her sisters in Canyon Country.

Emma, however, remained hospitalized about six weeks because she didn't take to bottle feeding. Doctors had to insert a tube in her stomach.

But all four girls are healthy; they just are a little smaller than other 4-month-olds. Emma has a ``harmless growth'' above her left eye that doctors say is unrelated to the fact that she's a quadruplet, and Kimberly said medical options include treatments to shrink it, surgery to remove it - or the bump might just go away on its own.

Doctors' only concern was that the growth ``was causing her eye to be shut, and they didn't want the eye development to be hindered,'' she said.

The couple's occupations suggest they might have perfect on-the-job training for raising kids in general - and girls in particular. Martin is a registered nurse at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center and the Kaiser hospital in Hollywood. Kimberly is a hairdresser, whose sole clients the next couple of years probably will be her husband and kids.

``I know that Martin loves having me home. He thinks that's the most important job there is,'' she said.

And she approaches her daily tasks accordingly. While the girls are napping, Kimberly squeezes in a load of laundry, straightens up around the house, catches up on phone calls or sneaks in a snooze of her own.

On average, the four babies need a combined 20 diaper changes a day - ``disposable all the way'' and still donated by well-wishers, Kimberly said. Four newborns made breast feeding quite challenging, she added, so the girls now are on formula.

Feedings come about every three hours. The bottles are propped in place with towels and blankets, because neither parent can hold four babies at the same time when they are home alone with the quads.

The Jacobssons have four high chairs ready for when it's time to switch the quadruplets to solid food.

Members of the church congregation have donated baby clothes, but Martin and Kimberly don't always dress the quads alike.

The girls take three daytime naps, and then bedtime is 10 p.m. The next morning, Kimberly wakes up the quads at 9 - unless high-energy Natalie beats her to it.

As the girls have grown, distinct personalities have begun to emerge, their mother said.

``Hope probably has been the most easygoing,'' Kimberly said. ``She loves her pacifier.''

Sophia seems to be the most appreciative of her parents' system of baby-rearing. ``She was real high-maintenance at the beginning. She was constantly wanting to be held and waking up in the middle of her nap,'' Kimberly said.

``She just wasn't following the program. But (now), the more structured I am, the happier she is. I think she's going to like a lot of order,'' Kimberly added.

``Emma . . . loves to sleep. Any time I put her down for a nap, she never wakes up,'' the new mother said. Natalie, on the other hand, makes her feelings known.

``She's so little, but her cry echoes through the house. She's so loud. When she wants to eat, she wants to be fed now. She's kind of demanding,'' Kimberly said. ``I think she's going to be the leader of the pack.''

Ethan, meanwhile, had some initial big-brother jealousy of the new babies. ``But now he really loves them,'' Kimberly said. ``Because I've had the help and the support, I've had a lot of time with him.''

Mother and son sometimes go to Griffith Park, and the Jacobssons have taken Ethan to Disneyland twice since the quads came along. ``He's taking it really well that he doesn't get as much attention as before,'' Martin said.

Ethan, Kimberly added, ``rolls with the punches really well, but if we don't set aside time (for him), it's really obvious.''

The new parents concede that their adjustment was a challenge, too. ``Certainly, it's been overwhelming, the stress of it all and constantly being busy,'' Martin said.

Eventually, he hopes to enroll in a two-year master's degree program to become an anesthesia nurse, a career move that Kimberly said would double his salary.

Although the girls are young, mix-ups haven't been a problem. But just as a precaution, Martin said, they kept the quads' hospital ID bracelets on for a while to erase any doubt about who is who from one day to the next.

``They're all distinctly different now. In the infant stage, they were very much alike, and it was hard to tell,'' Martin confessed.

``But I don't mistake them anymore - and we got their names right.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) It's always a full house for Kimberly, left, Ethan and Martin Jacobsson with babies Hope, left, Natalie, Sophia and Emma.

(2) The Jacobssons cite an orderly routine for helping cope with the birth of quadruplets.

Hans Gutknecht/Daily News