:eek: how do they do it:
On the quiet road of neat, three-bed semis in Hemsworth, West Yorkshire, one house clearly stands out. There's nothing unusual about the festive wreath still hanging from the door, nor the child's pink bike waiting to be ridden on the lawn.
But the large skip on the driveway contains not the usual domestic detritus, but large bags containing 1,200 nappies.
Rachel Reidford, 24, and her partner Ricky Jones, 20, pay almost £200 a month for the private skip. The local council refused to provide them with an extra wheelie bin - such luxuries, said the bureaucrats, are issued only in extreme circumstances.
Yet Rachel and Ricky's circumstances couldn't be much more extreme. Just 15 months ago, they were a young couple, bringing up Rachel's six-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, Ellie. Today, astonishingly, they are parents to six - having had twins Evie and Elliot at the end of 2005, and triplets Harry, Alfie and Billy just ten months later. Amazingly, the children were all conceived naturally, with no help from fertility drugs.
"We get through 40 nappies - and that's on a good day," says Rachel, a former tax inspector. "You can imagine how quickly our bin gets full. We offered to pay the council for an extra one but they wouldn't allow it due to the 'additional landfill cost'.
"I pointed out that the money they'd spent sending out three council workers to assess our rubbish would have paid for the extra bin - but they still refused." Such petty-mindedness is small beer for Rachel and Ricky, a security officer, who have more important things to think about.
As Rachel sits on the brown leather sofa in their modest lounge, bottle-feeding Harry, Ricky blows raspberries onto the tummy of a giggling Elliot. His twin Evie bounds around the room with her proud big sister, who kisses her siblings at every opportunity. The remaining triplets doze peacefully in their vibrating baby chairs.
Ricky admits that visitors are often surprised by the level of calm in the house. "People think they're coming into a madhouse," he says.
"They're always shocked because it's usually peaceful. I think lots of people were waiting for us to fall apart, but it's brought Rachel and I closer together. And if we're calm and happy then that rubs off on the children. There's no point getting stressed, you have to be organised and get on with it. We consider ourselves lucky that we have six healthy children - it could have been so different."
With a maturity that betrays their youth, the only obvious signs that stress relief may occasionally be required is a bottle of Restore Me bubble bath in the bathroom and a supply of chocolate in the fridge.
The house is clean and tidy, though the dining room is crammed with buggies, prams and toys until the couple can buy the four-bedroom home they need.
"Somewhere under all that stuff is a gorgeous, glass dining table that I hope to be reunited with one day," Rachel laughs.
Upstairs, Ellie has her own bedroom and announces that nothing can go in it unless it's pink. Evie and Elliot have separate cots in a room decorated with a Mamas & Papas animal frieze - "We bought them the best of everything when they were born," admits Rachel -and the triplets share a vast cot beside their parents' bed.
The triplet boys have to be laid next to each other in the order they were born - Harry, Alfie then Billy - otherwise there's trouble.
"Harry and Alfie were from the same egg - so they're identical - and they really sense each other's presence," says Rachel. "If they're not laid next to each other at night, that's when the tantrums start."
Rachel and Ricky were brought up in respectable, hard-working families. Rachel's mum, Joy, is a cleaner, dad, Alan, is an engineer, as is Ricky's father, Liam, while his mother, Dawn, is a housewife.
Ricky is the eldest of four, the youngest just a year older than Ellie. While Rachel had to give up her job in personnel for a major supermarket chain, Ricky works 12-hour shifts as a security officer for the same company, but they are determined to survive on his salary alone.
"We'd be twice as well off if we claimed everything we're entitled to," Rachel continues, "but we don't want people to look at us and assume we live off state benefits.
"We've both been brought up to work hard and that's what will be instilled in our own children as we raise them, as will having good manners and understanding the value of money."
Rachel adds: "Our only concession is the family allowance and the £78-a-week credit we receive to pay for the twins to go to nursery three mornings a week. We have a few hundred pounds a week left to buy food and pay the bills once we've bought all the essentials like nappies and milk formula, at £70 and £56 a week respectively."
The couple met at work in 2003, fell in love and moved in together a year later. They doted on Ellie and say they often talked about their future, but didn't get as far as discussing children. It was a shock when in March 2005 Rachel discovered she was six weeks pregnant.
"We'd always been careful so I've no idea where we slipped up," she smiles. Little did they know until she was taken into hospital a few weeks later for a gall bladder scan, that Rachel was, in fact, expecting twins. "It was a huge shock," she recalls, "but we love each other and both have strong family values, so there was never any question of not keeping the babies.
"Finding out so early in the pregnancy gave us plenty of time to get used to the idea, and enabled us to spread the cost of buying all the paraphernalia that comes with having children.
"Fortunately we both had a few savings, but both families were wonderful. Ricky's parents would buy something for one twin and my parents would get the same thing for the other."
Friends were also quick to help. Before the twins were born, they couldn't see the carpet in the nursery for all the pink and blue clothes piled high.
As a young couple, they were quick to resurrect their sex life after the twins were born, although Rachel insists they were doubly careful with contraception - she even had a coil fitted in May last year.
But it was too late, because, unbeknown to Rachel, she was already pregnant with triplets. With no morning sickness, weight gain or movement in her stomach - triplets typically don't move much because there isn't room - the first inkling she had was a missed period in June.
Despite being five months pregnant, her periods had been regular until then. "My heart sank, my stomach churned as I stared at the positive pregnancy test," she recalls.
"I did three more tests, but I still didn't believe it. Ricky and I had already got our family and we'd been so careful, I couldn't believe it was happening to me.
"But, again, there was no way I'd have terminated the pregnancy." The couple assumed Rachel must be in the very early stages of pregnancy and decided not to tell friends and family until they'd passed the three-month stage.
But they had miscalculated spectacularly. "Ricky had gone to work the late shift the night before we were due to see the midwife last August and I woke up with agonising back and stomach pains," recalls Rachel.
"Then my waters broke. I dialled 999 and less than an hour later I'd delivered Harry in the ambulance. Ricky had to wait for someone to cover his shift so said he'd meet us at the hospital. The twins were just ten months old and had to come with me, but Ellie was having a seaside break with my mum.
"While Evie clapped in delight at the sound of the siren, Elliot looked on bemused as his brother was born."
Ricky, distraught that he'd missed his son's birth, arrived at the hospital in Pontefract just in time to hear the news that Rachel was actually having two babies.
"I clung onto Ricky in disbelief saying 'help me, help me'. I couldn't get my head round it, not only was I giving birth months before I expected to, I was having another set of twins."
But, of course, nature had one last surprise in store, when a final emergency scan showed that little Alfie wasn't the last baby. Billy, the third, was still inside.
When he was finally delivered, each baby weighed over four pounds and Rachel discovered she'd been 34 weeks pregnant. "I used to scoff at stories in magazines about women who'd given birth without realising they were pregnant, then it was happening to me and I felt so foolish.
"As the triplets lay there attached to drips, wires and oxygen masks, we couldn't hold the tears back and I sobbed uncontrollably.
"I remember thinking how awful it was that my babies were wearing hospital clothes, wrapped in hospital blankets because we hadn't had time to buy anything, and certainly hadn't banked on three children."
When Rachel called her mother and Ellie to break the news, they went into shock. "Mum was squealing on the phone and when I spoke to Ellie she just said: 'Mummy, why are you telling me fibs? When I went away I had one brother and one sister, and now you're saying I've got four brothers and one sister.' "
Over the days that followed, Rachel sat in her hospital bed and wrote a list of everything they needed, then dispatched Ricky and both sets of parents to the shops. "We spent £1,000 on essentials like nappies, milk, bedding and baby clothes, but our parents and grandparents were brilliant and contributed a lot.
"My gran bought a huge cot for the triplets while Ricky's gran paid for the special three-berth pram we had shipped in from America."
Asked what contraception they now use, Rachel jokes: "Ricky sleeps in the garden," adding: "We don't want our kids to miss out on anything when they're growing up, but it's going to be tough and there's no way we could manage with more.
"Ricky was refused a vasectomy on the NHS as they say he's too young, so we're saving up £400 to go privately, since the contraceptive methods we've used previously have failed us spectacularly."
With a daily routine that includes 40 nappy changes, 20 bottle feeds and five loads of washing and ironing, most people would forgive the couple for looking just a little jaded.
But they look healthy and happy. "We're very lucky," says Rachel. "All the children sleep right through the night. Our parents take it in turns to have the twins or triplets to give us a break and Ellie is an enormous help.
"She's wonderful and will happily feed Evie and Elliot their bottles and yoghurts, read them stories at bedtime and help with the conveyor belt that is bath time.
"While I bath the children one by one, Ricky dries them and Ellie hands out nappies, pyjamas and towels. We're teaching her to be aware of things that might spell danger for the little ones, such as climbing on furniture. It pays to have an extra pair of eyes and she adores having so many babies to play with."
Bedtime is at 7pm for the five babies and Rachel admits that from tea-time she's on countdown to a bit of peace and quiet. "When Ricky gets home from work at 5.30pm I shut him in the lounge with the children while I prepare bottles and meals.
"Ellie is tucked up by 9pm and we eat once we're alone. It's a far cry from the days when we'd settle in front of the TV for the night with a bottle of wine.
"My first job once the children are in bed is to lay out clean clothes and bibs for the following morning, then mix bottles for the breakfast feed. Ricky leaves for work at 5.30am and we have a quick hug and joke that we'll see each other same time, same place tomorrow.
"The twins wake first at around 7am and I have just enough time to dress and feed them before repeating the routine with the triplets while getting Ellie ready for school.
"I'll have just tidied up from the first feeds and nappy changes when it's time to start all over again. I have to keep up to date with the internet food shopping too - there's no way I could negotiate the supermarket.
"But I'm a stickler for getting the babies out in the fresh air every day. That's where I rely on the help of their grandparents again, as I couldn't physically take all five for a walk on my own.
"If we want to go out in the car, Ricky's parents have to load their people carrier up with half the kids, prams and baggage while we take the rest in our family saloon."
They admit their biggest sacrifice is not having any time to themselves, but it's their New Year's resolution to go for dinner alone soon. "I don't know how we'll cope without all these little people wanting cuddles and attention," says Ricky. "But we deserve time as a couple too and must make sure we start going out now and again."
And despite being in their 20s, they don't yearn for boozy nights in the pub, insisting they weren't big on going out before the children arrived.
Rachel says: "When Ellie went to stay at her dad's at weekends, Ricky and I would be so exhausted from working all week that we'd be happy to relax in a local pub or restaurant or have a takeaway at home. Some of our friends have children, too, so we're not part of a circle that feels the need to hit the nightlife."
So, what of the obstetrician's comment when Rachel left hospital with the triplets that he'd see her in a year's time with quads? "Not a chance," she says, "we couldn't afford a second skip."
