ChezPerky

Thanks for listening to my venting in my last post. I actually feel much better now. My MIL picked up J from school today, which enabled Seth to go to BJs and the grocery for me. Another friend stopped at the kosher butcher and picked up chicken and ground beef for me. My mother called randomly and told me she’d be willing to take J to school Thursday morning to help me out while Seth was out of town. I got a LOT of baby food made tonight (and you know what? It was SO YUMMY). Slowly, the pieces fell into place.

A lot of you had some good suggestions. For example:

Use grocery delivery services (e.g. Peapod)
This is a good suggestion, and one that I’ve used in the past. It’s not a fool-proof suggestion, though. The limiting factor for me is that I keep kosher and I can’t get all of my kosher products from delivery services. I can’t get any kosher cheese, meat, or specialty items. I can get produce, paper goods (when available), and some commercially available products (though the online selection of kosher products is never as good as the in-store selection). That’s not to say it’s not a useful suggestion, it just has to go hand in hand with others as well. I also happen to suck at getting myself organized enough to get orders submitted in time for when I need them… but that’s another story and something for me to work on.

Your babies really don’t need much, if any, solid food right now. Give them some bits and pieces to nibble on if you get the chance while J is eating (bits of ripe pear, banana, avocado, steamed broccoli if you have the time to make it, steamed carrot, rice cakes spread with philly, toast etc.). They get enough nutrition from milk, and they will be learning to feed themselves. See http://www.babyledweaning.co.uk for more info
I’m actually a big believer in baby-led weaning. Er, I just haven’t managed to implement it in my own life. Heh. The babies and J don’t eat at the same time, so that doesn’t work SO well, but it’s all good. The babies DO eat little bits of our food when they’re at the table when we’re eating and they enjoy it, but they also REALLY love their purees, especially the chicken and broccoli (which I leave a little chunky for them). Fortunately, I did get a lot of food made tonight and it’s in the freezer so it will last for a while.

Follow up to previous suggestion…
If you really want to feed them purees, buy jars. It’s ridiculous that you are adding making purees onto your life. If the UK has places that will deliver organic baby meals, I would bet my life the US does too.
Again, the limiting factor here is the keeping kosher bit. Kosher jarred baby food is pretty limited to just a few kinds. As for delivered organic baby meals… not kosher ones. Still, I have to say, some of the most relaxing time I have these days is the time I spend making food for the babies. It really DOESN’T take that much time, and it gives me time that I can spend chatting with friends while I’m cooking the food. Pureeing takes seconds once the food is cooked. I feel such a sense of accomplishment once all is said and done that it’s something I’m loathe to give up.

For heavens sake don’t tidy up for your cleaner. She can tidy herself, or just clean around the mess.
Most weeks, I’m more satisfied if I can get rid of some of the clutter before she arrives, but this week, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE WITH YOU. You are 100% correct.

can’t the nanny make up the bottles herself?
Oh, she could. But it’s a holdover from when Ellie’s bottles were all complicated with the fortified calories. I’ve only JUST weaned Ellie from the fortified bottles, so I’m used to being a bit of a control freak about that. It was too complicated before. But you’re right. It’s probably time to just remember that I can give up some control in the world.

Does the four-year-old often fight with you about eating, or might this be a request for attention? Perhaps some extended, special one-on-one, just for fun time with him in future weeks would help.
It’s both normal and a cry for attention. J has a whole set of his own issues. We got him when he was a year old. He’s got a whole host of issues that were present probably long before we got him, poor kid. I have a whole post a-brewin’ about what’s been going on with him. We had a classroom consult done for him recently by an OT/Behavioral Specialist and are now working with a developmental pediatrician to decide how best to address his issues. He definitely DOES need some special one-on-one time, which we do try to fit in for him… he gets lots of individual attention from his grandmothers who each take him out (JUST him), and a fair bit from Seth, but I need to work on taking him out by himself also, because he doesn’t get a lot of one-on-one time with me. That being said, the tantrums, fits of rage, sensory issues, attention problems… those were all present before the triplets were conceived, before they were delivered, before they came home, and before they started interfering with his world. They certainly don’t make things better, though, do they?

******

Those were some of the helpful suggestions. Now I’m going to start cursing, so if you don’t want to hear (read?) cursing, um, stop reading? Because after all these lovely helpful suggestions, there was, of course, one obligatory asshole. An anonymous one. And before you go telling me to turn off anonymous comments, I will NOT do it. As I’ve said before, I’ve got several regular anonymous commenters (whom I recognize from content and writing style) that I love and I’d hate to lose them. The vast majority of my anonymous commenters are awesome. They are a good part of why I won’t go password protected, also.

So, before I get to the asshole, I’d first like to thank the subsequent anonymous commenter, who totally rocked my world when she (I’m assuming she, but I suppose it could be he) wrote, “Hey Anonymous at 8:46, stop giving us Anonymouses a bad name!”

And on to the asshole, oh Anonymous at 8:46. I’ll take your comments one at a time so that I can address them each, individually, with complete fairness, and with all the respect they deserve, and then some.

Why don’t you sleep instead of taking all this time to type this all out?
My point of the post wasn’t so much that I was sleep deprived, but rather that I was (am) facing a rather hellish week. Yes, I’m sleep deprived, but that’s not really my issue. Furthermore, I posted this post at 9:15 in the morning. I was at work. I wrote it while I was on a break pumping, if you must know, so I was multitasking. I can’t exactly sleep in the lactation room at work, but I CAN type. I didn’t have any work that I could be doing in there, so getting a little personal stress out so that I could work effectively the rest of the day seemed like a good idea at the time. Come to think of it, it still seems like a good idea. It’s certainly not like I do it every day. I don’t even post every day. Also, I type about 85 words per minute, so it’s not like it’s all that difficult to type something out. And, for the record, if you’re wondering why I’m not sleeping now, instead of typing this out now, I’m pumping. Again. That’s what I DO.

Why are you paying for a Nanny and a housekeeper if you say you can’t afford groceries?
I pay for a nanny because I go to work every day. Full time. A nanny is cheaper than day care for three infants. I’ve done the math. I make more money than my nanny makes. I’ve got several posts in my archives about the financial sense of paying for a nanny. I will not repeat them here. If you don’t like it, screw you. I don’t have a housekeeper. I have a cleaning lady. There is a fundamental difference between the two, actually. A housekeeper implies someone who is here much more full-time. My cleaning lady is here once per week for less than 2 hours. Why am I paying her? Because I have four children and a full time job. I don’t pay her very much, but there are only so many hours in the day. I didn’t explicitly say I couldn’t afford groceries. I said I didn’t know how I was going to pay for them. I’m splitting hairs now, but bear with me a minute. The point is I’m stressed about money. But so what? FIND ME SOMEONE WHO ISN’T STRESSED ABOUT MONEY SOMETIMES. Seriously. Screw you for judging me based on one off-the-cuff comment. You have no idea what my financial situation is. I’m not sitting around my house eating bon bons and watching television whilst I have my household help take care of my children and clean up my bon bon wrappers as I drop them on the floor. No one is peeling my grapes for me. I have someone come in to clean the floors and the bathrooms in my spacious mansion modest house, because there just isn’t enough time left to do it all. I do believe I said quite clearly I’m NOT supermom.

Don’t you think J is acting out because of the triplets?
No, I don’t think that’s it at all. I think if you knew anything about J, you wouldn’t ask any such thing. I think ANY child would act out with the addition of a sibling and certainly with the addition of three siblings and to a certain degree, J did that in the beginning. But that’s not what’s going on in this case, in terms of what I was trying to illustrate in my previous post. As I said above, J comes with his own set of issues, and they are issues that were present long before I was pregnant at all, let alone pregnant with triplets. Long before the triplets came and turned his life upside down. J is at his calmest around the babies. I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression about him either… he is one of the most loving, affectionate, sweet, giving children you will ever meet. But he also needs so much help. And we’re GETTING him that help. We’re WORKING with him. But when you have a child who perceives true physical pain just from putting on a pair of socks, a child who will SCREAM in true AGONY because he feels THAT level of pain from the sock when he’s having one of “those” days (and you can’t predict when one of “those” days will happen), you know that child needs help. When you have a four and a half year old who has been abandoned by his mother and is now so anxious anytime anyone leaves the house and forgets to say goodbye (even if it’s just, say, a repairman or someone who wouldn’t know better) that he becomes inconsolable for a ridiculous period of time…. you simply CANNOT blame that on the triplets. But you went and made a snap decision. You sat there with your armchair psychology and made assumptions based on very little knowledge of the actual specifics of our situation, didn’t you? You just don’t have a clue what this poor child deals with every day, but you just MUST know what you’re talking about, musn’t you, because you have the luxury of not living with whatever he has to live with. Well, WE are the ones who live with him and help him and love him and hold him and hug him and cry with him and laugh with him and giggle with him and tickle him and find the ways out of the scary places he finds himself in. WE are the ones who have worked through so many problems already. WE are the ones working with doctors and OTs and therapists for him. NOT YOU. So bugger off and stop acting like you have a cluestick, you dimkwit.

I think in a previous post, you said you wanted more children. Maybe you should re-think this because from what you have stated I don’t think it would be wise financially or emotionally.
And this, you little shit, THIS is where you started me on my cursing, ranting, raving madness tonight. I’m sure my venting session right now is only adding fuel to your fire in terms of your belief that I’m too emotionally unstable to have more children, but you know the best part? YOUR OPINION DOESN’T MATTER!

Here’s the thing: In the past 8 months, have you EVER known me to post a post in which I’ve been THIS overwhelmed? I don’t think so. And did I not EXPLICITLY STATE that I generally am “very, very good at keeping everything together. I don’t get stressed out. I don’t get overwhelmed. I handle things with grace and ease, MOST of the time.” ??? Was I not clear that it was simply all the shit that I have to deal with THIS week that was overwhelming me?

And what the hell? Find me ANYONE who would NOT be overwhelmed with this week. Find me ONE PARENT who has NEVER been overwhelmed a SINGLE DAY of their parenthood. Oh, you’ll find parents who CLAIM never to have been overwhelmed, but they’re lying. You’ll find parents who will never write down in a blog that they’re overwhelmed, for sure. But you’ll NEVER find a parent who has never a single day in their entire parenting lives felt overwhelmed.

Today, I felt overwhelmed. And writing that last post was part of what I needed to put it into perspective. I felt a little better getting it all out there. You know why? I wrote it down, read it, realized that I’d only written down about a QUARTER of what was going on this week and thought to myself, “Okay, Karen, you are COMPLETELY justified in feeling overwhelmed. Now what are you going to do about it?” And then I got myself together and made it happen. And now the rest of the week looks a lot better and I know it won’t be a problem and I’m NOT overwhelmed anymore. I’m honestly looking forward to it.

There isn’t a single day that I’m not grateful for my children, all four of them. There also isn’t a single day that I don’t wish for another. I long for another child just as much today as I did before. The pain of infertility is still fresh in my mind. My arms are finally full of babies, in a way I never expected, nor dreamt of, but that doesn’t mean I have to be done. I have so much love to give the babies that I do have and so much love to give the babies I don’t have. And I’ll have as many children as I am able to. Maybe that means I won’t have any more. I don’t know. But I sure hope that’s not the case.

Before I go to bed each night, I look into each one of my babies’ cribs (they all in their own crib now!), and also into J’s room, and I think about what each one of them did to make me smile that day. It’s always something different. Today Sam tried his darndest to crawl, and he almost did it. He also ate five graham cracker halves at the park (my nanny even got it on video on her cell phone for me) like a little piggie and wouldn’t eat his dinner because of it. Ellie gave me such HUGE smiles this morning at breakfast time. She was so happy and smiley and cuddly. She smiles for everyone, but for the first time today, she showed a little bit of stranger anxiety, which makes me tear up a little – another developmental milestone that she’s showing signs of reaching – a bittersweat moment for me, but one worth a smile from me. And sweet Abby with her two toofuses. She had such a great belly laugh today. And she LOVED those graham crackers today, also! I never would have thought to give them graham crackers yet (another nanny in the park – our old nanny for J, actually – gave them to them), but Seth picked some up at the grocery today. Abby was so sweet and giggly and she chewed with such excitement on her new teething ring today. She’s definitely Dracula! And J? Sweet J. Tonight he wanted pasta (he has a tendency to want “second dinner” as a stall tactic at bedtime), so I re-heated some pasta that was leftover from last night. He ate the pasta and said it was yummy and he came into the kitchen and said, “Oh Eema, do you know what I’m going to give you for making me this yummy pasta? I’m going to give you this nice hug!” And he did. He gave me a great big bear hug, and it was perfect.

Some days are overwhelming. Every single day is 100% worth it. My kids… all FOUR of them… are amazing.

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Well, I sure did just let it all hang out there yesterday, didn't I?? And I sure did break all the rules of no excessive cursing in my blog and no going off the deep end publicly and all that. Heh. That being said, I'm not sorry about it. My blog has never been a place where I cover up the truth of my life. I don't hide the pain of infertility, the frustrations or joys of triplet pregnancy or the rollercoaster nature of parenting four children after infertility. That's not in my nature. No, anonymous, I don't need anger management. My blog suffices as my means to letting out the steam on the few occasions when I need to. And now I feel better. But thank you for the well-intentioned, surely constructive, meaningful suggestion. I'm certain you had nothing but my best interests at heart. You'll be happy to know that I took my blood pressure this morning (I have a freakish paranoia about my blood pressure…I always have, despite having freakishly low blood pressure) and it was its usual 90/54, so I haven't done myself any permanent damage with my little freak out.

But aside from feeling naked from letting it all hang out there, I also feel naked because I am without any wedding/engagement rings this week. Yesterday I washed my hands, turned around to get a paper towel and my rings flew off across the bathroom. It took me a few minutes to find them both, and I decided it was time to stop procrastinating and take them to be re-sized. So I dropped them by the jeweler at lunch time to be re-sized. I have gone from a size 7 1/2 ring size on my left ring finger to a size 6. And that's only because my knuckle is still huge. Once past my knuckle, the ring will still be loose around my finger.

This triplet diet thing? It really works. You may recall that I lost about thirty pounds WHILE pregnant with the triplets. And I've lost a lot of weight since then. This was me shortly before I got pregnant the first time and then a more recent picture…
Then:

Nowish:

Clearly, I still have some pounds to lose, but I have a lot less to lose than I used to, that's for sure.

In other news, today is a glorious day! Last night all three babies slept through the night! Abby slept from 9:30ish to 5am; Sam slept from 7pm to 5am (he woke up at 10pm, but went back to sleep on his own); Sweet, predictable Ellie slept from 6:30pm until we woke her up for breakfast at 5:30am! That meant I got an entire four, count 'em, FOUR uninterrupted hours of sleep! I can almost SEE the light at the end of the tunnel:

(Seth got even more sleep than me because he was asleep before me) Hooray! Here's hoping our little ones sleep through the night TONIGHT while Seth's out of town! 🙂 Wouldn't that be nice?

And LIFE IS GOOD! Today is a new day. I left smiley happy children today who were happily chomping on graham crackers when I left…all four of them. A good day.

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Thanks for listening to my venting in my last post. I actually feel much better now. My MIL picked up J from school today, which enabled Seth to go to BJs and the grocery for me. Another friend stopped at the kosher butcher and picked up chicken and ground beef for me. My mother called randomly and told me she'd be willing to take J to school Thursday morning to help me out while Seth was out of town. I got a LOT of baby food made tonight (and you know what? It was SO YUMMY). Slowly, the pieces fell into place.

A lot of you had some good suggestions. For example:

Use grocery delivery services (e.g. Peapod)
This is a good suggestion, and one that I've used in the past. It's not a fool-proof suggestion, though. The limiting factor for me is that I keep kosher and I can't get all of my kosher products from delivery services. I can't get any kosher cheese, meat, or specialty items. I can get produce, paper goods (when available), and some commercially available products (though the online selection of kosher products is never as good as the in-store selection). That's not to say it's not a useful suggestion, it just has to go hand in hand with others as well. I also happen to suck at getting myself organized enough to get orders submitted in time for when I need them… but that's another story and something for me to work on.

Your babies really don't need much, if any, solid food right now. Give them some bits and pieces to nibble on if you get the chance while J is eating (bits of ripe pear, banana, avocado, steamed broccoli if you have the time to make it, steamed carrot, rice cakes spread with philly, toast etc.). They get enough nutrition from milk, and they will be learning to feed themselves. See http://www.babyledweaning.co.uk for more info
I'm actually a big believer in baby-led weaning. Er, I just haven't managed to implement it in my own life. Heh. The babies and J don't eat at the same time, so that doesn't work SO well, but it's all good. The babies DO eat little bits of our food when they're at the table when we're eating and they enjoy it, but they also REALLY love their purees, especially the chicken and broccoli (which I leave a little chunky for them). Fortunately, I did get a lot of food made tonight and it's in the freezer so it will last for a while.

Follow up to previous suggestion…
If you really want to feed them purees, buy jars. It's ridiculous that you are adding making purees onto your life. If the UK has places that will deliver organic baby meals, I would bet my life the US does too.
Again, the limiting factor here is the keeping kosher bit. Kosher jarred baby food is pretty limited to just a few kinds. As for delivered organic baby meals… not kosher ones. Still, I have to say, some of the most relaxing time I have these days is the time I spend making food for the babies. It really DOESN'T take that much time, and it gives me time that I can spend chatting with friends while I'm cooking the food. Pureeing takes seconds once the food is cooked. I feel such a sense of accomplishment once all is said and done that it's something I'm loathe to give up.

For heavens sake don't tidy up for your cleaner. She can tidy herself, or just clean around the mess.
Most weeks, I'm more satisfied if I can get rid of some of the clutter before she arrives, but this week, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE WITH YOU. You are 100% correct.

can't the nanny make up the bottles herself?
Oh, she could. But it's a holdover from when Ellie's bottles were all complicated with the fortified calories. I've only JUST weaned Ellie from the fortified bottles, so I'm used to being a bit of a control freak about that. It was too complicated before. But you're right. It's probably time to just remember that I can give up some control in the world.

Does the four-year-old often fight with you about eating, or might this be a request for attention? Perhaps some extended, special one-on-one, just for fun time with him in future weeks would help.
It's both normal and a cry for attention. J has a whole set of his own issues. We got him when he was a year old. He's got a whole host of issues that were present probably long before we got him, poor kid. I have a whole post a-brewin' about what's been going on with him. We had a classroom consult done for him recently by an OT/Behavioral Specialist and are now working with a developmental pediatrician to decide how best to address his issues. He definitely DOES need some special one-on-one time, which we do try to fit in for him… he gets lots of individual attention from his grandmothers who each take him out (JUST him), and a fair bit from Seth, but I need to work on taking him out by himself also, because he doesn't get a lot of one-on-one time with me. That being said, the tantrums, fits of rage, sensory issues, attention problems… those were all present before the triplets were conceived, before they were delivered, before they came home, and before they started interfering with his world. They certainly don't make things better, though, do they?

******

Those were some of the helpful suggestions. Now I'm going to start cursing, so if you don't want to hear (read?) cursing, um, stop reading? Because after all these lovely helpful suggestions, there was, of course, one obligatory asshole. An anonymous one. And before you go telling me to turn off anonymous comments, I will NOT do it. As I've said before, I've got several regular anonymous commenters (whom I recognize from content and writing style) that I love and I'd hate to lose them. The vast majority of my anonymous commenters are awesome. They are a good part of why I won't go password protected, also.

So, before I get to the asshole, I'd first like to thank the subsequent anonymous commenter, who totally rocked my world when she (I'm assuming she, but I suppose it could be he) wrote, "Hey Anonymous at 8:46, stop giving us Anonymouses a bad name!"

And on to the asshole, oh Anonymous at 8:46. I'll take your comments one at a time so that I can address them each, individually, with complete fairness, and with all the respect they deserve, and then some.

Why don't you sleep instead of taking all this time to type this all out?
My point of the post wasn't so much that I was sleep deprived, but rather that I was (am) facing a rather hellish week. Yes, I'm sleep deprived, but that's not really my issue. Furthermore, I posted this post at 9:15 in the morning. I was at work. I wrote it while I was on a break pumping, if you must know, so I was multitasking. I can't exactly sleep in the lactation room at work, but I CAN type. I didn't have any work that I could be doing in there, so getting a little personal stress out so that I could work effectively the rest of the day seemed like a good idea at the time. Come to think of it, it still seems like a good idea. It's certainly not like I do it every day. I don't even post every day. Also, I type about 85 words per minute, so it's not like it's all that difficult to type something out. And, for the record, if you're wondering why I'm not sleeping now, instead of typing this out now, I'm pumping. Again. That's what I DO.

Why are you paying for a Nanny and a housekeeper if you say you can't afford groceries?
I pay for a nanny because I go to work every day. Full time. A nanny is cheaper than day care for three infants. I've done the math. I make more money than my nanny makes. I've got several posts in my archives about the financial sense of paying for a nanny. I will not repeat them here. If you don't like it, screw you. I don't have a housekeeper. I have a cleaning lady. There is a fundamental difference between the two, actually. A housekeeper implies someone who is here much more full-time. My cleaning lady is here once per week for less than 2 hours. Why am I paying her? Because I have four children and a full time job. I don't pay her very much, but there are only so many hours in the day. I didn't explicitly say I couldn't afford groceries. I said I didn't know how I was going to pay for them. I'm splitting hairs now, but bear with me a minute. The point is I'm stressed about money. But so what? FIND ME SOMEONE WHO ISN'T STRESSED ABOUT MONEY SOMETIMES. Seriously. Screw you for judging me based on one off-the-cuff comment. You have no idea what my financial situation is. I'm not sitting around my house eating bon bons and watching television whilst I have my household help take care of my children and clean up my bon bon wrappers as I drop them on the floor. No one is peeling my grapes for me. I have someone come in to clean the floors and the bathrooms in my spacious mansion modest house, because there just isn't enough time left to do it all. I do believe I said quite clearly I'm NOT supermom.

Don't you think J is acting out because of the triplets?
No, I don't think that's it at all. I think if you knew anything about J, you wouldn't ask any such thing. I think ANY child would act out with the addition of a sibling and certainly with the addition of three siblings and to a certain degree, J did that in the beginning. But that's not what's going on in this case, in terms of what I was trying to illustrate in my previous post. As I said above, J comes with his own set of issues, and they are issues that were present long before I was pregnant at all, let alone pregnant with triplets. Long before the triplets came and turned his life upside down. J is at his calmest around the babies. I don't want to give anyone the wrong impression about him either… he is one of the most loving, affectionate, sweet, giving children you will ever meet. But he also needs so much help. And we're GETTING him that help. We're WORKING with him. But when you have a child who perceives true physical pain just from putting on a pair of socks, a child who will SCREAM in true AGONY because he feels THAT level of pain from the sock when he's having one of "those" days (and you can't predict when one of "those" days will happen), you know that child needs help. When you have a four and a half year old who has been abandoned by his mother and is now so anxious anytime anyone leaves the house and forgets to say goodbye (even if it's just, say, a repairman or someone who wouldn't know better) that he becomes inconsolable for a ridiculous period of time…. you simply CANNOT blame that on the triplets. But you went and made a snap decision. You sat there with your armchair psychology and made assumptions based on very little knowledge of the actual specifics of our situation, didn't you? You just don't have a clue what this poor child deals with every day, but you just MUST know what you're talking about, musn't you, because you have the luxury of not living with whatever he has to live with. Well, WE are the ones who live with him and help him and love him and hold him and hug him and cry with him and laugh with him and giggle with him and tickle him and find the ways out of the scary places he finds himself in. WE are the ones who have worked through so many problems already. WE are the ones working with doctors and OTs and therapists for him. NOT YOU. So bugger off and stop acting like you have a cluestick, you dimkwit.

I think in a previous post, you said you wanted more children. Maybe you should re-think this because from what you have stated I don't think it would be wise financially or emotionally.
And this, you little shit, THIS is where you started me on my cursing, ranting, raving madness tonight. I'm sure my venting session right now is only adding fuel to your fire in terms of your belief that I'm too emotionally unstable to have more children, but you know the best part? YOUR OPINION DOESN'T MATTER!

Here's the thing: In the past 8 months, have you EVER known me to post a post in which I've been THIS overwhelmed? I don't think so. And did I not EXPLICITLY STATE that I generally am "very, very good at keeping everything together. I don't get stressed out. I don't get overwhelmed. I handle things with grace and ease, MOST of the time." ??? Was I not clear that it was simply all the shit that I have to deal with THIS week that was overwhelming me?

And what the hell? Find me ANYONE who would NOT be overwhelmed with this week. Find me ONE PARENT who has NEVER been overwhelmed a SINGLE DAY of their parenthood. Oh, you'll find parents who CLAIM never to have been overwhelmed, but they're lying. You'll find parents who will never write down in a blog that they're overwhelmed, for sure. But you'll NEVER find a parent who has never a single day in their entire parenting lives felt overwhelmed.

Today, I felt overwhelmed. And writing that last post was part of what I needed to put it into perspective. I felt a little better getting it all out there. You know why? I wrote it down, read it, realized that I'd only written down about a QUARTER of what was going on this week and thought to myself, "Okay, Karen, you are COMPLETELY justified in feeling overwhelmed. Now what are you going to do about it?" And then I got myself together and made it happen. And now the rest of the week looks a lot better and I know it won't be a problem and I'm NOT overwhelmed anymore. I'm honestly looking forward to it.

There isn't a single day that I'm not grateful for my children, all four of them. There also isn't a single day that I don't wish for another. I long for another child just as much today as I did before. The pain of infertility is still fresh in my mind. My arms are finally full of babies, in a way I never expected, nor dreamt of, but that doesn't mean I have to be done. I have so much love to give the babies that I do have and so much love to give the babies I don't have. And I'll have as many children as I am able to. Maybe that means I won't have any more. I don't know. But I sure hope that's not the case.

Before I go to bed each night, I look into each one of my babies' cribs (they all in their own crib now!), and also into J's room, and I think about what each one of them did to make me smile that day. It's always something different. Today Sam tried his darndest to crawl, and he almost did it. He also ate five graham cracker halves at the park (my nanny even got it on video on her cell phone for me) like a little piggie and wouldn't eat his dinner because of it. Ellie gave me such HUGE smiles this morning at breakfast time. She was so happy and smiley and cuddly. She smiles for everyone, but for the first time today, she showed a little bit of stranger anxiety, which makes me tear up a little – another developmental milestone that she's showing signs of reaching – a bittersweat moment for me, but one worth a smile from me. And sweet Abby with her two toofuses. She had such a great belly laugh today. And she LOVED those graham crackers today, also! I never would have thought to give them graham crackers yet (another nanny in the park – our old nanny for J, actually – gave them to them), but Seth picked some up at the grocery today. Abby was so sweet and giggly and she chewed with such excitement on her new teething ring today. She's definitely Dracula! And J? Sweet J. Tonight he wanted pasta (he has a tendency to want "second dinner" as a stall tactic at bedtime), so I re-heated some pasta that was leftover from last night. He ate the pasta and said it was yummy and he came into the kitchen and said, "Oh Eema, do you know what I'm going to give you for making me this yummy pasta? I'm going to give you this nice hug!" And he did. He gave me a great big bear hug, and it was perfect.

Some days are overwhelming. Every single day is 100% worth it. My kids… all FOUR of them… are amazing.

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I started blogging here well into my IF experience. By the time I started this blog, I’d already had several years of TTC, years of charting, 5 Clomid cycles, 3 IUIs… We’d already had J in our lives for some time by then. And, something I rarely talk about, we’d almost adopted a baby. So let me tell you the Cliffs Notes version of that story…

I got a call in January 2006 from a Rabbi friend of mine saying that he’d gotten some information through the grapevine about a young woman who was looking for an Orthodox family to adopt a baby that she was pregnant with. Were we interested? Well, sure, we were interested in finding out more, but certainly not interested in committing to anything without knowing more details. Turned out this young woman was not a Conservative woman in a nearby state, had been involved with an older (unmarried) gentleman and found herself, um, in a “family way” despite having been on the pill, and he was, well, less than supportive. She was not in a profession that she felt could support a single-mother lifestyle, neither financially nor logistically.

I can’t remember exactly why she wanted an Orthodox family… she herself wasn’t Orthodox, but I think she was looking to have her child raised in a traditional home with a sense of values which would hopefully lead to choices in that child’s adult life which would preclude such a predicament for them. She had a list of questions that the Rabbi that she had contacted in her home state sent out to potential candidates, so we figured, “what the heck” and we sent in our answers. She asked for some pictures, too, so we sent in pictures, including some pictures of us with J. Sure enough, out of the dozens of “applications” she received, she wanted to speak with us (I think she spoke to a few others as well). I spoke with her (I’ll call her SL) on the phone several times, and we emailed several times a day every day for a week.

After about a week and a half, SL decided she wanted us to adopt her baby. We had some time, since she wasn’t due until the summer, but I made a list of things that I’d need to take care of… we were talking about dealing with an adoption across two states so I had to figure out how to make that happen and who to retain as a lawyer, etc.

A few weeks later, I went to go visit my grandmother, who was very sick (she died the following summer). While I was there, SL had a miscarriage. When I returned home a couple days later, I was planning to have lunch with SL. On my way up, I found out that SL was in the hospital, so I met her at the ER. She ended up with emergency surgery and lost a fallopian tube.

SL and I continued to maintain an email correspondence for some time. I got pregnant shortly after her baby would have been born and we fell out of touch. Three months later, I had a miscarriage. I didn’t hear from her again until last month when out of the blue she emailed me randomly. I told her about the miscarriage, the subsequent triplet pregnancy and delivery, sent her some pictures. She told me she’d made a career change, went back to school and had just graduated with a business degree and was about to start a master’s degree at a prestigious New England University.

I’m really happy for her. But it DID throw me off my game for a few days for some reason.

Little did I know how FAR off my game I was going to be thrown, because today I received THIS email:

I had been feeling tired the last few days, and my tummy was cranky so I went to the urgent care center thinking I was coming down with something. I was. I am pregnant…

So she was on the pill. Only one fallopian tube. One night stand on a trip up to visit her soon-to-be-new-University. Her period is TWO days late, and she already knows she’s pregnant, just because she was feeling weird. Not so much an infertile-myrtle. I swear, I’m surrounded by cliches. You have got to be kidding me!

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I started blogging here well into my IF experience. By the time I started this blog, I'd already had several years of TTC, years of charting, 5 Clomid cycles, 3 IUIs… We'd already had J in our lives for some time by then. And, something I rarely talk about, we'd almost adopted a baby. So let me tell you the Cliffs Notes version of that story…

I got a call in January 2006 from a Rabbi friend of mine saying that he'd gotten some information through the grapevine about a young woman who was looking for an Orthodox family to adopt a baby that she was pregnant with. Were we interested? Well, sure, we were interested in finding out more, but certainly not interested in committing to anything without knowing more details. Turned out this young woman was not a Conservative woman in a nearby state, had been involved with an older (unmarried) gentleman and found herself, um, in a "family way" despite having been on the pill, and he was, well, less than supportive. She was not in a profession that she felt could support a single-mother lifestyle, neither financially nor logistically.

I can't remember exactly why she wanted an Orthodox family… she herself wasn't Orthodox, but I think she was looking to have her child raised in a traditional home with a sense of values which would hopefully lead to choices in that child's adult life which would preclude such a predicament for them. She had a list of questions that the Rabbi that she had contacted in her home state sent out to potential candidates, so we figured, "what the heck" and we sent in our answers. She asked for some pictures, too, so we sent in pictures, including some pictures of us with J. Sure enough, out of the dozens of "applications" she received, she wanted to speak with us (I think she spoke to a few others as well). I spoke with her (I'll call her SL) on the phone several times, and we emailed several times a day every day for a week.

After about a week and a half, SL decided she wanted us to adopt her baby. We had some time, since she wasn't due until the summer, but I made a list of things that I'd need to take care of… we were talking about dealing with an adoption across two states so I had to figure out how to make that happen and who to retain as a lawyer, etc.

A few weeks later, I went to go visit my grandmother, who was very sick (she died the following summer). While I was there, SL had a miscarriage. When I returned home a couple days later, I was planning to have lunch with SL. On my way up, I found out that SL was in the hospital, so I met her at the ER. She ended up with emergency surgery and lost a fallopian tube.

SL and I continued to maintain an email correspondence for some time. I got pregnant shortly after her baby would have been born and we fell out of touch. Three months later, I had a miscarriage. I didn't hear from her again until last month when out of the blue she emailed me randomly. I told her about the miscarriage, the subsequent triplet pregnancy and delivery, sent her some pictures. She told me she'd made a career change, went back to school and had just graduated with a business degree and was about to start a master's degree at a prestigious New England University.

I'm really happy for her. But it DID throw me off my game for a few days for some reason.

Little did I know how FAR off my game I was going to be thrown, because today I received THIS email:

I had been feeling tired the last few days, and my tummy was cranky so I went to the urgent care center thinking I was coming down with something. I was. I am pregnant…

So she was on the pill. Only one fallopian tube. One night stand on a trip up to visit her soon-to-be-new-University. Her period is TWO days late, and she already knows she's pregnant, just because she was feeling weird. Not so much an infertile-myrtle. I swear, I'm surrounded by cliches. You have got to be kidding me!

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One of the great benefits of having an infertility-turned-pregnancy-turned-parenting-triplets-slash-still-infertile blog is that I “meet” a lot of people. Sometimes, it is also a great responsibility. People turn to me for advice, or assvice. People look to me because I’ve been there, done that, gotten to the other side. Sometimes I have answers, and sometimes, all I have are empathetic tears.

A little over a year ago, a lovely woman, who is blogless so I can’t link you to her, contacted me with many questions about infertility, treatments, etc. She’s a single woman who was trying to pursue her dream of motherhood while navigating the difficult medical care provided by our nation’s military medical system. We have maintained an email relationship since. My friend did eventually become pregnant, and I rejoiced with her. I loved to see her belly-shots. I loved reading her emails about impending baby showers. I loved hearing of her plans for when her baby would come home with her.

I was devastated in January when her beautiful baby girl was born at 24 weeks, but rejoiced that baby girl, B, survived and was making continuous improvement. B has had a rocky road in the NICU, though. She had to have one of her arms amputated below the elbow. She spent a long time on a ventilator. She was under 2 pounds when she was born. But the important thing was that she was improving.

Today, I received this email:

My daughter B is going through a major rough patch right now. Just as I was preparing to bring her home she had a set back. B has severe chronic lung disease because of being so premature and lungs not being mature enough to function normally. As a result she was put on steroids but the steroids caused her heart to thicken and she had to be placed back onto the ventilator.

I’m requesting special prayer for B as she travels down this difficult road. Please pray for strength & healing so that I may hold my Angel again one day soon.

I know you all have very busy lives, and I know many of you haven’t even been able to achieve motherhood yet, so it must be very difficult to think of someone else’s baby while going through such difficult times. I know some of you aren’t religious, and some of you are. If you have a moment when you read this, please say a prayer, or think a thought, for little B. She’s been in the NICU for so long already.

We have so many hopes and dreams for her future, but most importantly, right now, what I want is for my friend to be able to hold her baby girl in her arms again.

According to the March of Dimes, 500,000 babies are born prematurely each year. I was lucky with my three, but I’m painfully aware of HOW lucky we were. I sincerely hope that it is true that, as the MoD envisions, someday, all babies will be born healthy. Until then, please include B in your thoughts for a speedy recovery.

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One of the great benefits of having an infertility-turned-pregnancy-turned-parenting-triplets-slash-still-infertile blog is that I "meet" a lot of people. Sometimes, it is also a great responsibility. People turn to me for advice, or assvice. People look to me because I've been there, done that, gotten to the other side. Sometimes I have answers, and sometimes, all I have are empathetic tears.

A little over a year ago, a lovely woman, who is blogless so I can't link you to her, contacted me with many questions about infertility, treatments, etc. She's a single woman who was trying to pursue her dream of motherhood while navigating the difficult medical care provided by our nation's military medical system. We have maintained an email relationship since. My friend did eventually become pregnant, and I rejoiced with her. I loved to see her belly-shots. I loved reading her emails about impending baby showers. I loved hearing of her plans for when her baby would come home with her.

I was devastated in January when her beautiful baby girl was born at 24 weeks, but rejoiced that baby girl, B, survived and was making continuous improvement. B has had a rocky road in the NICU, though. She had to have one of her arms amputated below the elbow. She spent a long time on a ventilator. She was under 2 pounds when she was born. But the important thing was that she was improving.

Today, I received this email:

My daughter B is going through a major rough patch right now. Just as I was preparing to bring her home she had a set back. B has severe chronic lung disease because of being so premature and lungs not being mature enough to function normally. As a result she was put on steroids but the steroids caused her heart to thicken and she had to be placed back onto the ventilator.

I'm requesting special prayer for B as she travels down this difficult road. Please pray for strength & healing so that I may hold my Angel again one day soon.

I know you all have very busy lives, and I know many of you haven't even been able to achieve motherhood yet, so it must be very difficult to think of someone else's baby while going through such difficult times. I know some of you aren't religious, and some of you are. If you have a moment when you read this, please say a prayer, or think a thought, for little B. She's been in the NICU for so long already.

We have so many hopes and dreams for her future, but most importantly, right now, what I want is for my friend to be able to hold her baby girl in her arms again.

According to the March of Dimes, 500,000 babies are born prematurely each year. I was lucky with my three, but I'm painfully aware of HOW lucky we were. I sincerely hope that it is true that, as the MoD envisions, someday, all babies will be born healthy. Until then, please include B in your thoughts for a speedy recovery.

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The babies go to sleep around 6:30 or 7pm.

Since she was 3 or 4 months old, except under very rare circumstance, Ellie hasn’t woken up at all, unless we wake her up until morning. We wake her up at 5am to eat so that she doesn’t get cheated out of her morning meal by her piggy brother, Sam. (if she gets up later than 5am, he cheats her out of her leisurely breakfast, we’ve found)

Abby generally wakes up around 11 or 12 to eat. Sometimes she also wakes up in the 4am range, but often sleeps through until 6am after that. She’s pretty predictable.

Sam… Well, he likes to eat, you see. He will eat from a bottle, particularly if I’m not around, but he much prefers to nurse. And so he makes up for the fact that I’m not around all day, by being up half the night most nights. I’m somewhat loathe to try to train him out of this, because I know at some point he’ll train out of it himself anyway, and I know he really is hungry when he wakes up, and I know at some point I really will miss this together time with him, even if it IS two in the morning. Sigh.

The last few nights I’ve been so exhausted I’ve been having a hard time staying awake past 9 or so. But I had things to do last night, so I was still up at 11 when both Abby and Sam woke up screaming. This did not bode well for the night (Sam usually doesn’t wake up THAT early, and when he does, it usually means a LONG night for me). So, Seth fed Abby while I fed Sam and then we both collapsed into bed in hopes of grabbing at least a couple hours of sleep before the screaming began. Funny thing, though… either we were so tired we slept through it (unlikely), or a miracle happened.

Next thing we knew, the alarm went off at 5am, Seth brought me Ellie for her breakfast and then next thing I knew, it was 6am and time for Abby and Sam to eat. A new day had begun. Is it possible that I got a whole six hours of uninterrupted sleep? Could it be? And if so, how is it that I’m still so tired today?

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The babies go to sleep around 6:30 or 7pm.

Since she was 3 or 4 months old, except under very rare circumstance, Ellie hasn't woken up at all, unless we wake her up until morning. We wake her up at 5am to eat so that she doesn't get cheated out of her morning meal by her piggy brother, Sam. (if she gets up later than 5am, he cheats her out of her leisurely breakfast, we've found)

Abby generally wakes up around 11 or 12 to eat. Sometimes she also wakes up in the 4am range, but often sleeps through until 6am after that. She's pretty predictable.

Sam… Well, he likes to eat, you see. He will eat from a bottle, particularly if I'm not around, but he much prefers to nurse. And so he makes up for the fact that I'm not around all day, by being up half the night most nights. I'm somewhat loathe to try to train him out of this, because I know at some point he'll train out of it himself anyway, and I know he really is hungry when he wakes up, and I know at some point I really will miss this together time with him, even if it IS two in the morning. Sigh.

The last few nights I've been so exhausted I've been having a hard time staying awake past 9 or so. But I had things to do last night, so I was still up at 11 when both Abby and Sam woke up screaming. This did not bode well for the night (Sam usually doesn't wake up THAT early, and when he does, it usually means a LONG night for me). So, Seth fed Abby while I fed Sam and then we both collapsed into bed in hopes of grabbing at least a couple hours of sleep before the screaming began. Funny thing, though… either we were so tired we slept through it (unlikely), or a miracle happened.

Next thing we knew, the alarm went off at 5am, Seth brought me Ellie for her breakfast and then next thing I knew, it was 6am and time for Abby and Sam to eat. A new day had begun. Is it possible that I got a whole six hours of uninterrupted sleep? Could it be? And if so, how is it that I'm still so tired today?

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• Jody Reminded me that I am in danger of never writing that birth story. Have no fear. It is half written and is saved as a draft in my blogger drafts. It has not been forgotten about. I figure I’m probably the only one left who’s interested in reading it anyway, but I’m still writing it.
• I think we’re on to Baby #2 with ear infection(s). Ellie was super-fussy all day yesterday (VERY unlike her). I brought her down to a friend of mine who is a pediatrician to take a looksee. She couldn’t see much because there was wax in the way and she didn’t want to risk trying to clean it out. From what she COULD see, it looked pinkish red, which suggested some inflammation, so there was probably at least a mild infection. Yippee. I’m taking her in to be seen this morning. Because I didn’t ever want to get a FULL day in at work anyway, RIGHT?
• Sam is having a really hard time sleeping at night. I wouldn’t mind except that this means I’m having a really hard time sleeping at night. Sigh.
• The triplets have their six month check up on Wednesday. This is blowing my mind.
• Jess is in Puerto Rico. While I’m very happy for her, I miss her terribly and I’m very selfish and I WANT HER BACK NOW.
• I’m missing having tiny babies, which is ridiculous.
• I still mourn not having a normal delivery which is even stupider, since I have three beautiful healthy(ish) babies.
• Abby slept through the night last night. She rocks. Ellie did too, but she always does.
• I have a meeting to get to in three minutes so that’s all for now.

  UPDATE: Ellie doesn’t have an ear infection, thankfully, but probably does have a viral infection of some kind which basically means we do nothing. Fine with me, just wanted to make sure I didn’t need to do anything to make her more comfortable.

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