Welcome to the homepage of Emma Michelle Haven! I hope you enjoy the latest version of my ever-evolving home on the web. It's the perfect place to learn more about me, and you are welcome to stay as long as you like. :-)

As you've gathered, I'm Emma. I first created this homepage as a sort of info-site about what it's like to be a multiple. This is something that interests many people, and it's something that makes me unique (well, unique is not exactly the right word to use, I guess! LOL! But you know what I meant!) so I thought it would be a fun thing to do. Other people write things on their homepages that make them unique and interesting, such as their hobbies, their accomplishments, their pets, and so on. This is my thing. Well, after a while I ran out of ideas for the page, so I redesigned it. It no longer has a question and answer section, because I simply no longer have the time for that. But questions and comments about my homepage are certainly welcome through email.

First, you'll have to learn all about me. So far you know only my name, and that I'm a multiple. But here is more about me.

I'm a pretty average small-town California girl. I have dark blonde hair and blue eyes, and I'm rather tall (5'7"). I just graduated from high school, which may make me just a little above-average in the brains department because I just turned 17. I was able to complete four years of high school in only three years because I was on an independent study program (more about that later). I take art classes, do a lot of volunteer work, and love cats and horses. I love Harry Potter, romantic comedies, hanging out with my friends, and playing board games. In fact, there isn't anything very striking about me, I'm a quiet and rather serious person who is more likely to have her nose buried in a book than to be the center of attention anywhere. The thing that makes me different from other people is the fact that I was born as part of a higher order multiple birth.

Multiple births are not very rare. You've probably heard lots of things on the news about them. And on TV. And in magazines. Twins are the most common. You're probably familiar with the names for multiples, twins (2), triplets (3), quadruplets (4), quintuplets (5), sextuplets (6), septuplets (7), and octuplets (8), just from hearing things on the news. Probably the most famous septuplets are the McCaughey septuplets from Iowa, and the most famous sextuplets are probably the Dilley sextuplets. There is no question who the most famous quintuplets are, they are the Dionne quintuplets of Canada, the first ever quintuplets to survive infancy and also the only known set of identical quintuplets in the world.

So, are there names for multiples that are more than 8? I've gotten this question a few times and it made me curious, so I found out. Nine are called nonuplets, ten are called decaplets, eleven are called unodecaplets, twelve are called duodecaplets, thirteen are called tridecaplets, fourteen are called quadecaplets, fifteen are called quindecaplets. That is all I was able to find out! Of course, there have never (yet) been a live set of nine or more babies. There have been some conceived, but all the pregnancies ended in abortion or miscarriage very early on.

Multiples can happen in one of two ways. The first way is most common. Instead of releasing one egg, a woman's ovaries release two or more eggs in the same month. All the eggs have the same chance of being fertilized by sperm, and becoming babies. The babies will have completely different DNA, and will not be identical, they will be fraternal. They can be of the same sex or different sexes. They will not look any more alike than any siblings do. The other way is more complicated. Only one egg is released. Then it is fertilized by one sperm. Then, instead of developing into a single baby, the fertilized egg splits. It can split into two or more parts. Each of these parts is exactly alike. Each one will develop into a baby, and those babies will be very alike. They will be the same sex. To this day, no one knows exactly what causes the split, so there is no known cause of identical twins! There are also other types of multiples. For example, you can have a set of triplets where two of them are identical and one is not. This happens because two eggs were released, creating two babies who are not identical, and then one of the egg splits and creates two babies who are identical. There are also mirror-image twins, which are identical but who have certain features (such as a cowlick) on opposite sides. There is also some evidence that there may be multiples who are half-identical, this would happen if an egg split into identical parts before being fertilized, and the parts were then fertilized by different sperm. As you can see, this is all very complicated, and it's no wonder that people are both confused and fascinated by multiples!

It is more uncommon for higher-order multiples to be natural. By natural I mean conceived without the use of some sort of fertility treatments. There are fertility drugs out there that cause a woman to ovulate more than one egg every month. This increases her chance of getting pregnant, however it also increases the chance that she will have more than one baby. Fertility drugs can only cause fraternal multiples. There is no way to help create identical multiples, there is no drug or treatment that can cause them. However, I gave an example above about triplets being two identical and one fraternal, and that could still happen with someone who got pregnant using fertility drugs, however the fertility drugs would be responsible for causing only two of the three babies. All that said, there any many multiples out there who were not created through fertility treatments. Nature does some weird things sometimes. The Dionne quintuplets, for example, were five identical girls. Imagine an egg splitting not into two parts, but into five parts!

My sisters and I are quintuplets, or quints. We were born on May 30, 1985 to a 24 year old mother and 23 year old father. We were born many years before fertility treatments became commonly used, and back then higher-order multiples were very very uncommon! Our parents, being very young, would never have dreamed of using fertility treatments. They had been married only two years, and were not even trying to have a child yet. So imagine their surprise.

This would be a good place to give you some stats!

Our names are Alix Margarett, Bryn Paloma, Claire Leigh, Deirdre Elizabeth, and Emma Michelle. We were named A, B, C, D, and E, which I guess is something parents like to do with multiples (along with giving sound-alike names or names that all start with the same letter). When we were born the smallest was me, at 2 pounds 11 ounces. The biggest was Alix, at 3 pounds 6 ounces. All of us stayed in the hospital for about eight weeks and then the first ones (Alix and Bryn) were released. Then we were released one by one. I was the last to be released, after eleven weeks in the hospital.

Unfortunately, medicine was not as good back then as it is now. Seventeen years can make a big difference. Our mother was in extreme danger while carrying us. After delivery, she was very sick. She was in the ICU (intensive care unit) for six weeks after we were born. She ended up with permanent disabilities, such as liver and kidney damage, gastro-intestinal damage, and weakness in the arms and legs. After getting out of the hospital she was in a wheelchair most of the time.

Worse yet, neither of our parents had any family support. Our father had a mother and two sisters, but they lived in a different state, and our mother had no family at all. They were also not wealthy people. Before having us, they both worked. After having us our mother continued to work as an editor, and our father had to drop his full time job in favor of a job that allowed him to work from home most of the time, because he had to be the one to take care of us all the time. They could not afford to hire anyone to help, except for very short times when our father had to go in to work.

Our mother continued to get worse and she died three months before our fourth birthday of liver failure.

Luckily, none of us girls had any kind of medical problems. We were lucky, because multiples often have problems because of being premature and very small. Problems can include blindness, developmental delays, and much more. By the time we entered school it was clear that we were on the same level as all the other kids our age. I think that is pretty lucky.

Our father stayed single until we were eight years old. Then he got married, but the marriage lasted less than nine months! They got a divorce. They did not have any children together. None of us girls ever wanted our father to get married again, or to have a stepmother. First of all, our father did a great job raising us. Secondly, we picked up the idea that a lot of people thought that he should get married to give us a mother, or some silly thing like that, and even at a young age we thought that was ridiculous.

Almost two years ago we did have to make a large adjustment when one of our father's sisters died and he was named guardian of her three children. His other sister was going through a divorce at that precise time and did not want any more children, and his mother was too old. He did not hesitate about taking them and he has adopted them since then. They are Anna age 2, Hunter age 4, and Jared age 5. We girls thought it would be great fun to have a baby and two toddlers in the house, and we were thrilled about the prospect of lots of baby-sitting jobs. Until we found out we weren't getting paid for them! :-)

As we grew up our father was able to stabilize our family financially. As soon as we entered school he was able to find a part time job, in addition to his from-home job. This helped a lot. Then he inherited a small farm from his mother who could no longer live alone on it, and we moved to California to live on the farm, meaning that we no longer had to pay rent because we owned the property. Our father then sold a bunch of the land, which brought in a quite a lot of money because land in California is very pricey. By the time we were halfway through high school our father was even able to quit his second job and just keep the from-home job. This was necessary due to the fact that he had just become guardian to three small children.

We live on a very small farm. Or at least, it used to be a farm. Most of the land was sold off. We have a large chunk around our house, with a barn, stable, a huge garden where we grow vegetables and berries, and a small orchard of apple and cherry trees. We keep two horses, Fire and Thor. We have a number of other animal, such as goats, pigs, chickens, geese, and two small ponds of trout. People think it's weird to have trout, but trout is very easy to raise as long as you have a pond to keep and breed them in! You get a few fish and pretty soon you have more than you want. Fresh too! And ponds are used by other animals too.

Because our farm is far from everything, as soon as we graduated from the local elementary school we began to be homeschooled. Our elementary school was a two-room building with two teachers for all 40-something of the kids attending it! There were only about 40-50 children in grades 1 through 5. The middle school and high school were one building, about six or seven miles from us. It was more convenient to homeschool us. Then, when we graduated from the 8th grade, we were able to take some of our classes from college. We completed high school in three years rather than four.

I guess now I've told most of our story, and I can begin to talk more about us as quintuplets.

Where can I begin? Growing up, I think we were too used to getting attention to really notice it. Really, we had been paid attention to from the day we first rolled down the street in our custom-made stroller. We thought it was all normal. We learned more about ourselves as we got older, and eventually realized that we were pretty special. At the age of 12 we made our first trip to Twinsburg, Ohio, which is gathering place for multiples! We met lots of people there who were just like us.

Do we think that being multiples makes us different from other people? We get this question a lot. Personally, I think I already made it clear that I consider myself a very normal, down-to-earth person who does not make much of a sensation. By ourselves, we do not think of ourselves as any different from anyone else! Together, however, yes, we are different from other people.

Are we identical? I get this question quite a lot. No, we are not. The only known identical quints were the Dionne quintuplets. There are some sets of quints in other countries that some people think may be identical, but none that have been verified to be identical through DNA testing. As for us, we are two identical and three identical. However, as people notice, we look very much alike, in fact remarkably alike. Of course, we are all from the same parents, and we are all the same age, so these are all very good reasons for why we look like each other. How people look depends entirely on their DNA, and although we did not all get the exact same DNA, we did get our DNA from the same two people!

Okay, so what are some ways that we are different? First of all, eye color. Alix and Bryn have hazel eyes. Claire, Deirdre, and I have blue eyes. Then there is our hair. Alix and Bryn have naturally curly hair which they straighten because it is difficult to manage. Claire, Deirdre, and I have naturally straight hair. Another difference is lip/mouth shape, Alix and Bryn have a much fuller mouth that looks pouty, while the rest of us have thinner lips (alas). Alix and Bryn also have dimples which the rest of us do not have. Other of our differences are made by us. Hair length, number of piercing, hair style, make-up, and clothing, all those things are different because we do have our own individual tastes in these things.

The easiest way to see how different we are is to put two fraternal sisters close together. See, if you have all five of us together, it is hard to see our differences and we look very much alike. We mix together and instead of seeing two different girls what you have is two identical girls and three more identical girls who also look very much like the other two. That makes it much harder to see the differences.

Our senior picture definitely makes us look more alike than we are, because some of us are dressed alike, we have our hair done alike, and the photo was taken with a filter that makes features softer and also retouched. This tends to remove a lot of the things that make people look different, like distinct nose shape or jaw line. What probably really confuses people is that Alix, Claire, and Deirdre are the ones who are dressed alike, which I guess is confusing because they are not the identical three. Actually we all had that outfit, we were getting senior photos taken in three different outfits, and there was not supposed to be a "together" photo. The photographer was interested in us and decided to give us a free photo together. We had already all taken our senior photos in various outfits, so for the group photo we just went in whatever we were wearing in the last photo to be taken. It would have been even better if we were all dressed alike, or better yet if we were all wearing something different, but there was no time to change outfits again.

So you don't dress alike? I think people expect us to! I get this question a lot. Well, why should we dress alike? I get a bit irritated when I see parents out with their twins and they have them dressed alike. However, we do often have the same clothing, we just don't wear it at the same time! Relatives and even friends often give us the same gift. I think they think it is the "right" thing to do. I think many people have that idea. We've been getting identical gifts ever since we were born! Our grandmother sends us clothing all the time (she has good taste though) because she and her daughter (our remaining aunt) own a clothing store together. On holidays and our birthdays we can almost count on getting the same outfit. We do not mind and it does not bother us. There are times when we do dress alike. For example for our senior photos we had identical dresses (white) and identical sweaters. This was to save time changing, one pose could be in a dress, and another outfit could be created by simply throwing on a sweater. We wanted identical outfits because we thought that would be cute, matching senior photos to hand out. The third outfit was different for all of us. Just like there is no good reason to dress alike, there is also no good reason not to! We have fun with it. Taking photos in the same outfit so they'll match is hardly the same as wearing the same outfits all the time.

Did we ever switch places? Yes we have. Claire once took my place in a school play because even though I had auditioned and won the role, I got horribly bored AND got horrible stage-fright within about a week. She simply started going to after-school auditions instead of me, and we told the drama teacher about the switch after a few weeks. Another time I signed up for a college art class, and absolutely had to be there the first day because there was a waiting list and anyone who did not show up to first class would lose their place. I was sick as a dog that day and Deirdre went instead of me. No one ever knew. There have been other times. Nothing really major.

Do you ever get mixed up? I don't know how to answer this. First of all, other people (teachers, friends, etc) are always getting us mixed up. Someone will come up to me thinking I'm Claire, or to Deirdre thinking she's me... and so on. This is only natural, because we are after all identical. I'm not sure what people mean by "mixed up" it is not as if we could mix ourselves up and never figure out which is which, that would be totally stupid and I think everyone with half a brain knows that each of us knows exactly who she is! As for mixing up each other, yes that happens. Not under normal circumstances, but at times like meeting in the hall when one of us has just showered and has a towel wrapped around her head or something. It can be impossible in those cases to guess just who it is. I mean, if I meet Alix or Bryn like that, I know that they are Alix or Bryn and not Claire or Deirdre, because of course of the fact that we are not identical, but that still would not tell me exactly which one (Alix or Bryn) it was. And no, we do not, ever, try to confuse people on purpose. There is no point in that kind of trickery. Even as young children we never played games like that, and we certainly would not do it now.

Do we sound alike? Yes and no. The ones who are identical all sound alike. That is because identical multiples have identical voice boxes. The ones that are fraternal do not sound alike at all. You would have no trouble determining whether a voice belonged to either Alix or Bryn or whether it belonged to either me, Claire, or Deirdre. But even if you determined that it was Alix or Bryn you were hearing, you would not be able to tell which one of them it was!

So what are some ways we are alike? Yes, we are alike in many ways, whether we are identical or not! All five of us, for example, love animals, especially horses. There is really a lot of fighting about who gets to ride the two horses. We are all into Harry Potter and our poor dad had to buy five copies of all four books (and the 5th when it comes out!) because we could not share such a thing if it meant waiting for the others to finish reading! We have the same taste in music, which is to say we all like rock 'n' roll, but there are also differences like Alix liking country and Deirdre liking classical. We are all somewhat book-wormy, which is to say we all love books. We are all pretty artistic and like to draw, paint, do crafts, visit museums, and so on. Generally, if one of us thinks something (like a movie, a new recipe, or a painting) is great, the rest will agree. That does not mean that if one of us loves a movie so much that she wants to go see it three or four times, that the rest of us are prevented from liking it only enough to see it once. Neither are any of us prevented from absolutely hating it.

What about sharing? Well, when you have four sisters all the same age as you, you are likely to share a lot of stuff with them! So yes, I share a lot of things with my sisters. Before moving to California at the age of 6 years old, we lived in a two-bedroom apartment, which meant sharing a single room. We had the master bedroom, which was only big enough for our five beds, a dresser, and a bookshelf for toys and games. We had go sideways around one bed to get in or out the door. After moving to California we had a six-bedroom house. At first we all had our own rooms. Then two years ago when we got three siblings we had to make other arrangements. The two boys got one room and the girl got another. We had three bedrooms left between us. We share a bedroom again. It is much larger than the one we had though, and fits five beds, five dressers, two full-length mirrors, and it has a huge walk-in closet. We also have two other rooms. In one room we have all our school things, desks, bookshelves, and computers (we have 3 computers). In the second we have our big-screen TV, VCR, stereo, phone (we have 2 lines of our own), and couches. This second room is where we usually entertain our friends when they come over. We also share two bathrooms, there are three bathrooms in the house and our dad and the kids use the third one. As for sharing other things, we freely share clothing, make-up, CDs, and so on. That does not mean we take without asking. We do have all our own stuff.

What about cars? Everyone's favorite question. Well, our dad bought us one car on our birthday (16th), so we do share that. However, we have two family cars, our dad's car and a pick-up, which we can use if we need to. Like if we have different things going on on the same day.

That brings us to... Activities. We do a lot of different activities, as well as having part time jobs. Alix plays softball for a community team every third weekend, and also coaches a kids' softball team three times a week plus game days. Bryn plays piano, she has private lessons, and also gives lessons to younger kids. Deirdre and Claire are both dancers, they have been doing ballet since they were 9 years old and now they are aides at a ballet school four times a week. Claire also has a job at the library. I have art classes and I teach art at an after-school center. Alix, Bryn, and I all volunteer at an animal shelter. Claire and I both play tennis every Friday. Last summer we all worked at a summer camp as counselors, however this year we have other things to do.

College is looming ahead for all of us. We will all be attending the same junior college because there is only one in the area. We will not be studying the same things. Bryn wants to be a teacher. Alix wants to be an interpreter/translator like our dad. Claire wants to be a vet. Deirdre and I have not decided. I think Deirdre may end up teaching ballet, which means studying for a gym teacher first, I think. I think I may study marine biology, but I don't know what kind of career exactly I want. I would like to be an art teacher but I don't know if I am up to working with older kids daily, the thing is that I am good with little ones, but the older they get the less appealing they are (LOL) and art teachers mainly teach older kids, at least in schools, because in the lower grades the regular teacher can handle it. So we could, possibly, end up with three of us becoming teachers.

What are our future plans? We plan to live at home while we go through college. We will leave home once we have our B.A.'s or Masters degrees and have secure jobs. That's about all the plans we have!

Another question I'm often asked is what it was like for our dad to raise quints. Well, I am not my dad so I have no idea! I think that raising any five kids is hard for a single parent, they don't have to be quints. I think he did a great job and I know he would not trade us for anything.

I think the biggest question people ask is simply What is it like to be a quint? And unfortunately, while I have filled this page with little stories and examples, there is no way that I can describe what being a quint is like. First of all, I have nothing to compare it to. I have never been NOT a quint. I could ask you what it is like not to be one. What would you say?

Having four sisters the same age as me has always, well, nearly always, been a big plus and big advantage. We could have five times the outfits (swapping accessories and clothing), we always had a playmate, someone to talk to, someone to go to activities with, someone to remind us when we've forgotten something (because, you would think, all five of us would not forget the same thing!), and we had five times the stuff. For example, imagine five teen girls who all have part time jobs, compared to a girl who is an only child and had a part time job. Each of the six girls get their paycheck, and all head for a music store. Each one picks out a CD and buys it. They get home, and what happens? The girl who is an only child has just one new CD. The quints have five new CDs. Maybe music is not the best example, because it is very possible for multiples to have absolutely different tastes, but I'm just saying that is how it has always been for me. I'm never "just me," there is always someone there to help me, talk to me, help me out of a jam, or just stand by me during a difficult time. We have a very strong sisterly bond. Nothing would ever tear us apart. We might fight with each other, but just let an outsider threaten one of us, they would have to deal with all five of us standing shoulder to shoulder! I think that is an excellent way to go through life, especially through the teen years.

It looks like I have reached the end of the list of things I know people are curious about. I don't know what else I can say, but I do want to say that I welcome all questions and comments.

There's a really great forum called Stupid Twin Questions, which you may enjoy after reading this page.

Please sign the guestbook before you leave.