Meet the Parents Who Adopted 4 Kids in Just 24 Hours

Mom Kaley Carling is busy. And not just the kind of busy that comes from parenting; she's the kind of busy that happens when you become a new parent to four adopted kids under 2—all within 24 hours. Here's how their journey happened.

"We had tried to conceive for a couple of years, however, due to my lupus and RA [rheumatoid arthritis], that road was proving to be extremely hard on my body," Carling told Parents. "My husband and I decided to take a break from 'trying,' and to focus more on foster and/or adoption, something that had been a dream of mine since I was a teenager."

During that time, the couple experienced two failed adoptions. "The birth mother changed her mind right before she was due," Carling told us. "It was devastating and we mourned having lost her."

But in August 2015, just a few months later, their lives would change forever. The couple was connected with two girls (Haven, then 13 months, and Indie, then a newborn), who needed a foster home. That same day, they were contacted by a pregnant woman carrying twins who was looking for someone to adopt them. Incredibly, the couple decided they would do their best to meet the needs of all four children.

Their family started with Haven and Indie. "We had worked HARD for this family!" Carling said, and despite several obstacles, the path toward adopting Haven and Indie was soon cleared.

At the same time, Carling was busy bonding with the birth mom of their soon-to-be adopted twins, who lived out of state. The girls, Sunny and Weslie, were born in January 2016, and the Carlings were there to meet them.

A tense time followed during which Sunny was in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Phoenix. "It was extremely difficult to be in another state, missing Haven and Indie, with one newborn with us, and one in the NICU," Carling told Parents, adding, "We couldn't take Wes to the NICU to see Sunny, so my husband and I spent the majority of our three to four weeks in Arizona apart, one with Wes, the other with Sunny, then switch."

Finally, they could all be together back home in Utah, but settling in wasn't easy. "We brought the twins home to a 5-month-old, Indie, and an 18-month-old, Haven. Crazy, to say the least! We went through a can of formula PER DAY until Indie turned 1!" Carling confesses it took a good six months to get into the swing of things.

They finalized the adoptions for all four girls on October 19, 2016, and October 20, 2016. "It was easily the best few days of our lives!" she told us, adding, "The judge commented that she's never seen so much love and support in her courtroom before."

"Some days are incredibly difficult," Carling also said. "We've gone from two incomes to one, added FOUR more mouths to feed, and have significant debt from the private adoption for the twins, but our prayers were truly answered and our hearts are full. We are so happy to finally be a family."