Whatever your feelings about them, shows like 19 Kids and Counting and Kate Plus 8captured America's fascination with extremely large families.
While both programs would end up mired in controversy, they seemed to inspire curiosity about how such a large family unit can work. After all, it's hard enough to keep track of two or three children.
For most parents, being responsible for eight or 19 children would be downright nightmarish.
Can you imagine the amount of money you'd have to spend on everything from diapers to daycare? I shudder to think of it.
Yet each new child comes with a great deal of planning.
Although it's clearly challenging to add so many new members to a family, the parents can at least have a sense of what they're going to do by the time the child is born.
But what do you do when they're all born at once?
And I don't mean twins. I don't even mean triplets. That alone causes me anxiety beyond belief. Instead of adjusting for one new arrival, you suddenly have to find a way to accommodate six.
That's the challenge the McGhee family was faced with, and the public has had a clear view of their journey together.
From watching the babies learn to crawl to seeing them learn their ABCs, America has watched this family with fascination. So let's see how they made out.
COMMENT and let us know how think you would handle sextuplets.
Mia and Rozonno McGhee were high school sweethearts, so already I'm jealous.
The pair met in high school, and they seemed to understand each other's wants, needs and history right away.
Both had to endure a lot in their youth.
Mia was disowned as a teenager and Rozonno's mother struggled with drug addiction, so both knew what it was like to have to grow up early.
Yet their hardships didn't stop when they tried to have children.
They tried for several years with discouraging results. That's a long period of never seeing that little pink line show up on your pregnancy test, and it must have been heartbreaking. That's when they decided to see if fertility drugs could help them.
But it turns out that while they had quite the wait, the fertility drugs worked better than expected.
Like, way better. Like, six times better. I think is an accurate calculation.
The couple ended up having a child for almost every single year that they had been trying to conceive. One of those "be careful what you wish for" moments!
Indeed, they found themselves having to prepare for six new arrivals.
Rozonno has his own carpet and upholstery cleaning business, but Mia had to quit her job to care for the six babies.
They wondered how they could afford this family.
But no matter what happened, love would be their foundation.
To express that love, they decided to have this adorable photo taken with little Rozonno Jr., Olivia, Madison, Elijah, Issac, and Josiah. And can I just say how cute those names are?
Yet the family's luck started to change when that photo went viral.
It caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey, who invited them on her show. When they arrived, she gave them $250,000 in Walmart credit and bankrolled Mia and Rozonno's belated honeymoon in Las Vegas.
You read that right, $250,000 and finally a honeymoon the couple desperately deserve!
After all that waiting, after so much stress from children. They didn't just need this, they deserved it.
Don't look at me. I have allergies...
That appearance inspired an outpouring of generosity.
The couple and their kids were just too much cute to handle, and their story was absolutely beautiful. Who wouldn't be touched by how much they've gone through and how much love they show each other?
Soon, total strangers were donating diapers and offering to pay for car seats.
But as the kids grew older, diapers weren't exactly needed. Eventually, the McGhees had to turn people away. But things only got better from there.
The family ended up getting their own reality show called 6 Little McGhees.
It was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Network and followed the family as the children grew and the parents juggled their responsibilities.
Better yet, Rozonno saw his business expand and the McGhees could afford a larger house.
Altogether, the kids were able to grow up perfectly happy and healthy.
"You’d be surprised what sextuplets can do for you — they really motivated me,” Rozonno said. So they decided to do something pretty special.
They recreated their famous photo.
To commemorate how their family had grown over the last six years, the McGhees wanted to do something special. As you can see, the children have grown much more energetic since their last outing.
They wanted to capture the same feeling as their original photo.
So they hired the same photographers as before, who used the same technique of shooting two siblings at a time and putting it all together with Photoshop.
As the kids get older, the challenge is to keep up with them.
The McGhee family will explore this new chapter in their lives on their new show, Growing Up McGhee on UP.
So be honest, how would you handle six kids all going through potty training, puberty and college at once?
And really, be serious. You'd lose your mind, wouldn't you?
COMMENT and tell us how you'd feel about having six kids running around.
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