COLMAN, S.D. (KELO) — A Colman family about doubled in October. The Lebruns found out they were expecting their fourth child a little over a year ago, but the news they learned at the first ultrasound appointment came as a shock.

The Lebruns are busy.

“It’s always an adventure here,” mother Jenny Lebrun said.

Dusty and Jenny were a family of five with their three kids, Jack, Addy and Hunter a year ago. That was also around the same time Jenny found out she was expecting and had an appointment scheduled for an ultrasound.

“The doctor thought triplets, so she saw three babies at first,” Lebrun said.

But then after a closer look….

“Then she said, ‘Oh, wait, there’s a fourth baby. I just found four.’ You have quadruplets!'” Lebrun said.

Lebrun describes the moment after finding out as a blur as she called her husband, Dusty, who was working in the field.

“He didn’t take me serious because we prank and joke around a lot, and I kept telling him, ‘No, like this is real.’ And then I finally was like, ‘Our minivan is not big enough for our family anymore,’ and that’s kind of when it sank in,” Lebrun said.

Lebrun says she saw a fertility specialist and has had fertility treatments of some kind for all of her kids, but finding out it was four babies this time was unexpected.

“We knew with fertility meds. I mean, there’s always a chance of multiples, but I was being monitored, and there was just no sign that there would have been four babies. So yeah, just absolutely floored that there were four babies,” Lebrun said.

Lebrun says the pregnancy was smooth until she started getting sick at 28 weeks along. The quads were born at 29 weeks on October 2.

“Which is 11 weeks early, but when they were born, they were all breathing on their own. So overall, they were pretty healthy, just very tiny,” Lebrun said.

The three boys, Cru, Levi and Grayson, and one girl, Oakley, were able to go home a month earlier than expected around Thanksgiving but didn’t stay there for long.

“We were literally home for two weeks and RSV came and Cru stopped breathing, so he ended up getting airlifted to Avera, and he spent 14 days in the PICU,” Lebrun said.

Oakley also ended up sick with RSV and was in the PICU for 21 days – all during the Christmas season.

“We had some very dark days in the PICU, where again, we didn’t know if Cru was going to go home, and then Oakley had some really rough days that were very scary,” Lebrun said.

That’s where Lebrun says the Avera Foundation really helped them out. She never left Cru and Oakley’s sides in the PICU until Christmas morning.

“When I walked in my house, the living room was completely overflowing with presents, and that was thanks to the Avera Foundation and the family that sponsored us. By that time, I think we had been in the PICU for a good two and a half weeks, and I really felt like that was the first time I truly smiled, and I just like felt an overwhelming joy for the first time in weeks,” Lebrun said.

“They just were so appreciative of that fact that they were able to not have to worry about the details for Christmas and being able to do something really great for their kids,” Kellie Yackley, community giving officer with the Avera Foundation, said.

Yackley says all the dollars given to help families like the Lebruns are donated by people in communities across Avera’s footprint.

“Through the support of friends and family, they were just able to get the care that they really needed at the time that it was most important. They’ve had situations where some of the quads have had to come back and visit us, and knowing that they’re going to get the care to get them well and keep them growing into great little humans,” Yackley said.

After RSV, Cru and Oakley recovered and were able to go home. However, recently the little ones were back in the hospital again with COVID.

“After the last bout with hospitalizations, they’ve been really healthy. We’ve just been battling ear infections and that’s about it,” Lebrun said.

Now, the Lebruns’ four-bedroom home fits seven kids, and the quads all share a room.

“The babies sleep amazingly, so they’re getting about almost 12 hours of sleep, so thankfully they enjoy sleep just like their mom. So, I do get to sleep at night,” Lebrun said.

And during the day, it’s back to chaos.

“From the minute I wake up to the minute I go to bed, it is just nonstop changing diapers, making bottles, laundry, dishes, appointments,” Lebrun said.

And if the whole family is traveling somewhere, they now have to take two vehicles.

“We joke we either need an RV or a church van,” Lebrun said.

But even through the stressful hospital stays and busy days, the Lebruns would not change a thing.

“We’re very blessed. We don’t take a single day for granted with our kids, and we’re just going to keep living day by day and having fun with it,” Lebrun said.

They say they are thankful for all the support from people who have heard their story.

“Our family, our friends and our community, they’ve been just amazing. They did a diaper drive, a formula drive for us. Just family members and friends taking care of the older kids, and yeah, I still sometimes wake up and I’m like, ‘Is this really my life? Do I really have seven children?’ And yeah, it’s pretty unbelievable,” Lebrun said.

They do have five to seven appointments a week right now because each baby sees a specialist for a number of checkups.

According to Avera Health, this is the first set of quadruplets born there since 1995.

In the last year, Avera has delivered 78 sets of multiple births – 69 sets were twins, eight sets of triplets and the Lebruns’ one set of quads.