So was America. As the first surviving septuplets on record, the McCaughey babies—and the two women who delivered them—were big news. "It feels very strange," Drake says. "I'm not used to that kind of [attention]." Now all seven of the babies (Kenneth, Joel, Brandon, Kelsey, Nathan, Alexis and Natalie) are home in Carlisle, Iowa, with their parents and big sister Mikayla, 2. Having weighed less than 4 pounds at birth, the babies are steadily gaining weight and breathing on their own. Mom is breathing easier too—as are the doctors, now that the media frenzy has abated. "It's nice to be recognized," says Mahone. "But sometimes you do want people to understand that you were an excellent physician before this delivery." Former patient Sabra Burkle of Colchester, Ill., can vouch for that, asserting that Mahone and Drake "care more about how you feel physically and emotionally than anybody I've ever seen."
The good doctors clearly have their priorities straight. The two or three nights a week that she's not on call, Mahone hangs out with her husband, whom she married in 1990, and their son Reed in their five-bedroom home in Des Moines. She and Reed bake cookies, or she reads him stories while he's dressed up as the main character. Drake, who is single and lives in a three-bedroom townhouse in West Des Moines, had a tougher time dealing with sudden celebrity. Recently she attended a friend's wedding and, trying to be low-key, still caused a commotion. "It was sheer bedlam," she says. "I had to leave because it was too overwhelming."
Though they never imagined making world headlines, Drake and Mahone showed early promise. Growing up in Youngstown, Ohio, the oldest child of William, a U.S. Air Force captain killed in 1967 during the Vietnam War, and his wife, Norma, a learning-disabilities teacher, Mahone was encouraged to excel. She remembers her father's "losing it" when, as a preschooler, she had trouble counting. "I couldn't remember 10 to save my life," she says. "We'd get to 5, and I'd start hyperventilating because I knew I wasn't going to remember."
When Norma went back to college after her husband's death, 9-year-old Paula helped run the house. "I cooked, did what cleaning got done, took care of my [two younger] sisters, did the grocery shopping, cut the grass," she says. "My mom taught me to balance her checkbook, and I wrote all the checks." Her mother, who received her college degree the year Mahone graduated from high school, taught by example as well as instruction. Says Mahone: "I credit her with the knowledge that I can do whatever I put my mind to doing." Following Norma's academic lead, Mahone earned a bachelor's degree in biology from Goucher College in 1980 and her M.D. from the Medical College of Ohio in 1987, becoming medical director of perinatal services at Iowa Methodist in 1993.
Drake came of age in Chicago's Englewood section, the second of three children born to Leroy, a cook, and Julia, a postal worker. As a girl, she was an avid reader, her nose ever in the likes of Huckleberry Finn and Jane Eyre. "My mother would get mad at me because I wouldn't go outside," she says. "She'd take the book from me and say, 'You need to get some fresh air.' So I would sneak the book outside."
After Drake's parents divorced (Drake, who was 8, had little further contact with her father, who died in 1975), Julia sometimes took two jobs to support the family, leaving her mother, Levana Robinson, in charge of the house and a powerful influence on Drake. "I remember telling her, 'I'm going to get married one day, have a ton of kids and have some man take care of me,' " says Drake. "My grandmother said, 'But you can do for yourself what anyone else can do for you.' " Taking that message seriously, Drake studied chemistry at Dillard University in New Orleans and earned her bachelor's degree in 1979. In 1995, seven years after getting her M.D. from the University of Illinois, she joined Mahone in practice.
And if that practice has brought both women more fame than either is comfortable with, they are nevertheless thrilled to be part of medical history. "This will probably be the biggest thing to happen in my career," says Drake. "But I hope I haven't reached my summit yet. I'm going to just grow with this."
JEREMY HELLIGAR
LORNA GRISBY in Des Moines
- Contributors:
- Lorna Grisby.
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