Posted on 03/02/2019 10:08:47 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
If you’ve ever wielded a stroller carrying a baby while running, you know just how awkward and difficult it can be. You can’t swing both of your arms freely at once, your stride is sometimes cut short, and no matter how “lightweight” the stroller’s packaging promised it would be, it’s a beast to push up hills.
Now imagine that you have to push not one, but five kids in one—and for 26.2 miles. That will give you an idea of what 37-year-old Chad Kempel experienced at the Surf City Marathon in Huntington Beach, California, on February 3.
Kempel is a father of seven—including 1-year-old quintuplets—and he pushed the five little tykes in a covered stroller all the way to the finish line.
“I never expected to push anyone in a marathon,” the native of Mountain House, California, told Runner’s World. “The hills were especially hard. But when I thought about what the babies went through in the past year—all those feeding and breathing tubes—that gave me strength to push through to the finish and then some. Anything is possible.”
Kempel didn’t just stop at 26.2 miles at Surf City. After crossing the line in 5:45:04, he ran a little more than a mile more with the stroller to total 27.3 miles for the day.
The number had special meaning to the family: Amy had carried the quintuplets for 27 weeks and three days before giving birth prematurely on January 11, 2018. When the babies were born, they each only weighed three pounds, and had to be immediately treated with oxygen and feeding tubes to survive. The quintuplets’ fragile health conditions required them to stay in the intensive care unit for 73 days, Kempel said.
(Excerpt) Read more at runnersworld.com ...
I admire this father’s apparent devotion to doing what’s best for his quints, but with their fragile health history, pushing them uphill in a buggy does not seem the smartest thing to do. I’m surprised the mother even let him do it.
Good luck to the family.
We had a premature daughter, and by the time she was 1 she was a very robust little thing who would have been as capable as any other 1 year old of being pushed in a stroller for 27 miles. It must have been their nap time though for 5 of them to sit still for 3 hours in a stroller, and he probably had to have mom along following on a bicycle to tend to unhappy little ones.
Now do it for 9 months...
“It must have been their nap time though for 5 of them to sit still for 3 hours in a stroller,...”
From the story: “After crossing the line in 5:45:04...”
Try 6 hours +! They had to have been hungry.
I hope they're fine. God might have plans for the family.
Born at 27.3 weeks, and they survived after delivery - yes, I know, with help.
Yet, what the abortionists refuse to admit is that it is not the help the quints got after they were delivered that determines, or defines, that they were and are human beings.
Is a barely “viable” human being at less then 27 weeks in the womb not human merely because their LIFE is still so fragile? No, and just stating the truth that way, THEIR LIFE OUTSIDE THE WOMB MAY BE FRAGILE, is an admission that they are alive, they are a human life.
Yeah, I'm slow.
Yes, I am sorry for the typo. It wasn't stated in the article that he had helpers that followed along, but you can see them on the bicycles in the picture. And it also states that he and mom fed them in the stroller just before they started. So this was a team effort. Fortunately, babies do sleep well in the outside air, and you can see that he had a cover over their stroller and they were well dressed. Despite the palm trees it was cooler than normal this year, which at that location the heat could have been a problem. But they pulled it off.
As far as the wisdom of the idea... I don't know, but I admire any parents who raise 7 kids in this day and age. My wife and I both came from what would be considered large families these days. In my family we were born one after the other. My mom worked full time as a nurse. My dad was a home builder who worked in a family business with my grandfather and great uncle and he used to take us kids along to job sites with him. We were never dropped off at a daycare. We loved being with our dad, even though I am sure that it was very inconvenient at times. After we started going to school it probably wasn't as much of a challenge.
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