WALNUT CREEK — It still hasn’t hit Amy Kempel that she is the mother of seven children.

The Mountain House mom delivered five babies — fast becoming known as the Kempel quints — late Thursday night by Cesarean at Kaiser’s Walnut Creek hospital.

“The fact that there are five more babies and they’re all mine … it’s a surreal feeling,” she said Friday as she recuperated from the operation.

Born boy, girl, boy, girl, boy — Lincoln, Noelle, Grayson, Gabriella and Preston — the quints joined an exclusive club. Just 24 sets of quintuplets were born in the entire United States in 2015.

Smiling and looking visibly relieved, proud dad Chad Kempel rounded the corner about 9 p.m. Thursday to find his family in the waiting room. “They’re here!” he said.

“It’s seems like a dream,” he said shortly after sharing the good news and trading embraces. “The delivery happened so quick, and now these five babies we’ve been talking about for so long are right in front of me.”

The couple has been sharing their story with the Bay Area News Group for months.

The babies are tiny — around two and a half pounds — but stable. As of Friday afternoon, all but one were breathing on their own.

“There still have not been any issues, knock on wood,” Chad said.

It will depend on how the babies progress in the coming weeks at the hospital, but they could start going home in the next nine weeks or so, at what would have been Amy’s 36th week of pregnancy.

On Friday morning, the couple’s two older daughters — Savannah, 3, and Avery, 19 months — came by the hospital to meet their new brothers and sisters.

“Can we play with them? Can we play with them?” Savannah kept asking eagerly as her parents introduced each baby.

A bit more skeptical, Avery stood on Amy’s lap peering into the NICU incubators holding the babies. “Hi, baby,” she told each one, before tapping the glass for good measure.

The couple haven’t held the new additions yet, but the babies curl their tiny hands around their parents’ fingers when they reach into the incubators.

Chad had asked a priest to be on standby for the delivery in case things went wrong, but that turned out to be unnecessary, much to the relief of the couple and their family.

“I’m just thrilled,” said Amy’s dad, Don Fox. “The more grandchildren the merrier.”

“What a journey,” said Steven Kempel, Chad’s younger brother. “Can’t wait for the rest of it.”

The birth was the culmination of a monthslong ordeal for the Kempel family. When Amy, who delivered after a little more than 27 weeks of pregnancy, and Chad first learned they were expecting quintuplets, they began searching feverishly for guidance.

The couple had conceived using intrauterine insemination, where sperm are inserted into a woman’s uterus near her eggs. Doctors had warned the process could result in twins or even triplets, but the family didn’t expect to see five heartbeats.

The Kempels found a doctor in Arizona with a history of successfully delivering high-risk multiple babies. But Kaiser declined to let them go out of network, saying its doctors were prepared to handle the birth. Since then, the couple had been praying for the best.

“All the prayers are answered,” Mary Kempel, Chad’s mom, said after the birth, wiping away tears.

In the end, “everyone here has been great,” Chad said of the hospital staff.

“Ultimately we all want the same outcome,” said Amy.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, Amy moved into a room at the Walnut Creek hospital, keeping in touch with Savannah and Avery by video chat.

Now the work will begin in earnest. The couple are ready, the family says. An avid athlete, Chad once completed an Iron Man.

“Now we have an Iron Man and an Iron Lady,” Mary Kempel said, expressing amazement at Amy’s strength.

“What a way to start 2018,” said Chad’s dad, Paul Kempel.

Amy, still loopy and tired from the Cesarean, and Chad are still working out the details of how they will care for seven children. There will likely be eager volunteers from church and elsewhere to rely on, and the couple is planning to hire help, as well. But for now, they’re working on telling the babies apart.

“Amy says I can’t tattoo them this early,” Chad quipped.

Babies born at 27 weeks, the national average for quintuplets, have significantly higher risks of cerebral palsy and other issues than babies born full term. It’s too soon to tell exactly how the babies will do moving forward, but Chad said doctors and nurses were pleased with how the babies looked when they were born.

But the couple couldn’t bring themselves to get too hopeful ahead of the delivery. In 2013, the pair lost a set of twins, Marshall and Spencer, 22 weeks into the pregnancy.

“We’re scared,” Chad acknowledged before Amy gave birth.

The pair’s wedding anniversary is Jan. 13 — Saturday. It’s also the anniversary of the day they started dating and the day Chad proposed.

This Saturday, the pair will be celebrating being a family of nine.

“Here we go!” Chad said.