A Michigan couple whose large family attracted attention by growing to include 14 sons has welcomed their first daughter nearly three decades after the birth of their first child.
Kateri Schwandt gave birth Thursday to Maggie Jayne, who weighed in at 7 pounds, 8 ounces (3.4 kilograms) and entered a world filled with 14 older brothers.
Jay Schwandt said he and his wife, both 45, “are overjoyed and beyond excited to add Maggie Jayne to our family.”
“This year has been memorable in so many ways, for so many reasons, but Maggie is the greatest gift we could ever imagine,” he told the Detroit Free Press following his daughter’s birth at Mercy Health Saint Mary’s Hospital in Grand Rapids.
The Schwandts have been featured for years in local and national news as their family has grown. The couple has a livestreaming program called “14 Outdoorsmen” that may now need a name change.
Their oldest child, Tyler Schwandt, 28, said his parents thought they would never have a daughter after 14 sons. He said there’s likely nothing pink in the family’s home in the rural community of Lakeview, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of Grand Rapids.
“I don’t even know if my mom owns any pink clothing — or anything,” said Tyler, who is engaged to be married and recently bought a home 20 minutes away from his parents’ 200-acre (81-hectare) farm.
The Schwandts started dating as freshmen, attending Gaylord High School and Gaylord St. Mary’s, respectively. They wed in 1993, before they attended Ferris State University, and before they graduated the couple had three sons.
Both earned advanced degrees, even as their family grew. Kateri holds a master’s degree in social work from Grand Valley State University, and Jay, who is a lawyer and owner of a land surveying business, holds a law degree from Western Michigan University’s Thomas M. Cooley Law School.
(AP)
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9 Responses
This is great news לפי שיטת בית הלל
And why is this news on YWN? Anyone interested in this?
and here I thought you were featuring a frum family….. sheesh…..
Yes I am interested, it’s fascinating and it put a smile on my face.
COUNT…There are 13 boys..where is the 14th??
This should be motivation for the Observant Jewish community to actually be excited about having many children.
FYI Rav Yaakov Busel Zatsa”l who was just Niftar this past week had 10 sons and a daughter. All major Marbitsei Torah!!
Hope this is a little more newsworthy.
I enjoyed it to! Thanks for posting!
The white founding stock of the USA, Canada, and many European nations is being displaced by and replaced with third-world immigrants with higher birthrates. Acknowledging that this influx and the cohesion that it disrupts depresses wages, strains resources and infrastructure, and creates many additional problems and tensions; and supporting the right of native populations to preserve their heritage and culture and remain the majority in the nations that they created does not equate-to hatred or “White Supremacy”. Far too many Jews assert these very rights; the right of nationalism, for Jews, especially in the (prohibited) form of Zionism, while denying the very same rights to whites, in their own lands. We must disavow such blatant chutzpah. It is antithetical to the behavior that the Torah demands from us in golus.